The Talent Tank

EP 27 Nick Nelson

May 25, 2020 Nick Nelson Episode 39
The Talent Tank
EP 27 Nick Nelson
Show Notes Transcript

A play on the triumph and losses in performance and life.  The Talent Tank podcast will navigate the inner workings of lifestyle, lives, family, teams, careers, programs, and technology in and around the offroad motorsports industry.  What breeds success with your Talent Tank on full, failures when its on empty.  From the journey to the Starting Line to take that Green Flag, on to exploring trials and tribulations on and off the track in pursuit of victorious achievement and the Checkered Flag.

What a treat getting Mr. Sendy Senderson, the first cousin, three times removed of Larry The Enticer, akin to Blake Wilkey, but wears his mullet on his chin, and his Canadian Tuxedo as cutoffs.  In the hot seat for a deep dive in the tank, making time inbetween epic viral hits Nick Nelson @thennelson, the driver of the #40 ULTRA4 Racing 4400, and T1 driver, telling us hows its done and how simple it really is, if you are bold enough, and you just flat out work your ass off trying to fulfill your hopes and dreams.  North Carolina, Wyoming, Florida, and currently racing out of Las Vegas where welding, structural fab work, construction, and grinding it out have landed Nick in some amazing opportunities, and some crazy envious fun.  Everything from guns, souped up Jetta's and mini jet boats, enjoy.           

After the Checkered Flag-
Hickory Motor Speedway located in Hickory, North Carolina.  One of stock car racing's most storied venues, and is often referred to as the "World's Most Famous Short Track" and the "Birthplace of the NASCAR Stars".  First opening in 1951 as a 1⁄2-mile dirt track.  Drivers such as Gwyn Staley, Junior Johnson, Ned Jarrett, and Ralph Earnhardt  became track champions in the 1950s, with Earnhardt winning five of them. In 1953, NASCAR's Grand National Series visited the track for the first time. Tim Flock won that first race at the speedway, which became a regular part of the Grand National schedule. After winning his track championship in 1952, Junior Johnson became the most successful Grand National driver at Hickory, winning there seven times.  Hickory was dropped from the Grand National schedule after the 1971 season

Headshot Provided by Alan Johnson

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Intro/Outro :

Let's drop the green flag on this episode of the talent tank podcast. With your host Wyatt Pemberton bringing you the best, fastest, most knowledgeable personalities and ultra before and off road racing.

Wyatt Pemberton :

This episode of the talent tank brought to you by three amazing partners, custom splice offered recovery equipment, branding, motor sports, custom machine, and magnitude performance a mass Motorsports company. Enjoy. Alright, here we go. Here we go. Here we go. We're down to the final three episodes of the season this spring session, and I'm going to take it off for the summer. I think we've got a couple little cool ideas, cooking and kicking back and forth with a couple guys about some stuff that might happen over the summer. But by and large, the big episodes these big interviews with guys like we have on today, Nick Nelson. They will return this fall. Thinking August. All right, you dialed in. You turned on your streaming. You want to hear about Nick Nelson. Nick, got you on the horn. What's up, Nick? How are you? I'm good, man. How you doing, brother? Well, first, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the talent tank. You're a name. That is always this perennial contender name in the conversation on the box for the podium. If you're showing up to races, and I think we're going to talk about that here a little bit, like making races and not making races, but a lot of people came to me and said, like, dude, who is this guy that is constantly making ultra fours viral? Right? You're like the king of big air. You're you're one of the guys. I mean, don't you Dave cold put ultra fire on the map. You know, guys like Shannon Campbell put on the map. But when you look at the social media game today and what videos are going viral, as far as ultra force, they tend to be Nick Nelson. I mean, Lauren has his stuff. You know, there's some sloths and stuff. There's you know, I'm not I don't want to downplay anybody Miller has some good stuff you know, we'll get Intel puts out some amazing stuff for everybody. But yours is usually like cell phone videos of potato salad Hill and Moab and you do want to step down at what 60

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, actually well we'll actually he was there with us for that one so that was cool and we've worked with will really since probably 2010 you know when we were first out hammers I think we did our first little mini shoot with will so we've all kind of been around the you know, this whole game since it since so it was in its infancy, I guess you'd say. And then pismo. I saw an amazing video was that just this past spring or so? past fall? It was It feels like in the last 12 months. Maybe COVID is making drum that out so much. But his mo you went you like what was a hug fest was that what was going on? That's the some, you know, got some buddies in the terror crew group and that, you know, Wilkie and Darren Parsons and all those guys that get out there and usually are putting out this content and stuff and I've met those guys that have So we've been out you know, kind of talking and we've always every time we got together is like hey, we you know we want to we want to go out and do some jumps and stuff and have a good time and so Darren reached out to me and was like hey man, we're going to do this terror takeover in pismo Are you down the comb so and we were in between a race or something and the car was together so I jumped all over it and went out there and just had some fun. Yeah, when you come off the top of the jump over this Dune, you're in the air for so long, and you're sailing for so long. Like people I work with it saw like they were looking at like, that's fake. I'm like, No, man, that's not fake. They're like no wait no way a car can be in the air that long. No, you're in the air that long. How many feet was that? I don't know. They didn't really walk it out. It's a really weird hit. It's it's super It's really big. And so the speed is a huge factor there because there's it's really flat and then there's a perfect landing. Let's get you know you have to downslope so it takes the load off the car, but it's about a truck and a half long so you have this sweet spot that's a truck and a half and after that you land in the flats and you got all of the flowers. Right I got the flat once I think I'm a little bit shorter because of it still not even recently saw video it was going back and playing back some stuff about you know just yet mentally right about about sitting down with you and it was you and you and Lauren doing a gap jump and me and Lauren killed this gap jump I mean it looked good. You're combining when you're easily going maybe 30 miles an hour faster and absolutely almost take out his back bumper, like as you are jumping down behind him. And like Well, that's Nick. Yep. Yeah, we were trying to kind of put on a good show. And it's a really weird track. So we were kind of we kept trying to get together and it's like I we got, we got a part in the corner. So I'm trying to play catch up. So just pour it on and see what it'll do. All right, so I got a question here. I've not been around in last couple years in person and seeing this beard what's going on with this big old beard you got going? I don't know, man. It's always been around, you know, I kind of kept it short for a lot for years and then you know, the last two years or so probably kind of went a little longer and then when COVID started my girls in there and she's like have you ever you know like we you How long can you can you make it I'll never tried so we just let it go for last month and a half or two or whatever it is and ran it on that a little bit just for fun. And now you're getting into you've been in construction for you know handful of years starting up a common new business in the construction side of the world. They're in Las Vegas. That helping you get jobs Yeah, I mean, the credibility I don't know that's probably 5050 people you know you got the you got the people who are super clean shaven and and you know dressed to the nines all the time. Then you have us redneck showing up with beards and we carry guns and wherever you know we're dirty and so I'm sure but there's people that trust you probably because you're your real and then you probably have some people who would you know would prefer the GQ guy who shows up with his in his Mercedes, you know, dressed up but we haven't had problems. And you're one of those guys you can pull off both those looks that's that's what's cool. We got to do it. Yeah, do it. Awesome.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I was a So you said something, you know, and I brought it up to COVID. And what's going on today and the limitations and things are now I'm, I'm sitting here in Houston, Texas and our county judge, he's continued to extend the stay at home orders. But if you go out in the morning commute, this town is back open. Texas is back open. Everyone's back. Or for the most part, businesses are open rates. I think I know some of the bars are open. I don't know the clubs are open. But everything's come back to it here in South Texas. What's Vegas like? And what's your world like? Mila you know, I mean, my my fab shop is private. It's really it's it's a house. It's at the house. It's behind the gates. You know, there's nobody that comes in there and out of there. It's all just word of mouth, people that I know friends, you know, people in the race industry. We had Hartmann down here tuning last week, doing shocks and so that stuff really isn't affected. It's because no one even really knows you're there. Construction didn't stop either. So really, in my world, nothing stopped. We did like you said we had no traffic. I

Nick Nelson :

go across town in 25 minutes. And now it's not the case i mean now you're sitting on the freeway again parked on the way if you try to leave at six o'clock you're gonna sit in the parking lot

Wyatt Pemberton :

yeah that's that's exactly how it is here

Nick Nelson :

the bars are close we've been able to have breakfast that our breakfast spot you know, I mean some business partners and some friends we've got that back open. We've had some dinners here but they're they're really spaced out and they're doing some you know, appointment only or, you know, reservation only social distancing and the whole nine yards you know, keeping the table the clothes and moving tables out and separating them so at least we're getting back to you know, do some stuff but we're still they have the casinos locked down which means the bars are locked down. So I don't know, sis lacs kind of jumping on that California Oregon type deal. So we'll see. We'll see how that goes. I mean, obviously killing travel killing, you know,

Wyatt Pemberton :

struggle for ways to say this right now. You know, Vegas lives on the tourist dollar, the exhibitions, all the shows. The other day when there was this spirited trailer I going down on Johnson Valley You probably heard about a lot of people heard about the spirit of terror, right? I suppose. Heard a little stuff. Yeah, I looked at flights and it was $104 each way to come out there. And I couldn't break away for work, but like, Man, that's insane. That is insane number. I was talking to Casey Gilbert and his was on spirit. 38 bucks round trip from Detroit, to Memphis Vegas, or if it was Ontario, but you have no excuse not to go. He was pouring concrete on that day. Yeah, yeah, that's, uh, you know, y'all. I think a lot of us in this industry, you know, race guys or construction fab for the most part, these you know, we kept going. Yeah, and I know you talked about Hartman coming down a little bit ago. David Hartman, 4800. Driver. You guys are business partners, and we're gonna talk about him a little bit. But yeah, you and I talked, maybe maybe two weeks ago and he talked about that's exactly what happened. Everything had slowed down on, like the office side of his world slowed down, but everything else ramped up. For sure. The yin and the yang Let's get into Nick Nelson man North Carolina hickory North Carolina is where you're from right? Yes sir. I say that like with like some swagger cuz that's like NASCAR country like racing country like the history around hickory. Oh, yeah.

Nick Nelson :

Yes deep right there. We had a lot of we had a handful of drivers within you know, 10 minutes my house growing up yet I would My first job was cutting grass at one of the rice shops. That is

Wyatt Pemberton :

nuts. Oh, is did you get kind of the hook in you for racing back then? Or was that something that came years later that you're able to draw back to your younger years?

Nick Nelson :

I mean, really, I never tried to go after NASCAR. I mean, I've always been into, you know, motorcycles. I mean, I rode a little mini bike when I was two years old and got it for like a four wheeler when I was three and then you know, got into bikes again. And then it just kind of progressed over the years. And then you know, when I was 16, we got into rock crawling, Jeeps and stuff like that. Obviously, we're, you know, trying to build a Jeep in a garage or like in a garage on a driveway with the high lift and a drill and a hammer or something like whatever you had, you know, is super ghetto. Yeah that's how we got started right? Yeah, yeah you tried all the stupid like you know the three quarter elliptical buggy spring setups and all this you know trinket like the revolver shackles came out back in the day you know you're trying to do whatever you can to get something on the cheap so I'm not gonna lie I had I had a set of revolvers we never ran them though. But I did I did own a set at one point. I wish I wish I knew where they were like they need to like hung up on the Walmart shop is like this historical piece of our mind when I sold my to Dustin Eisenhower that I grew up with Dustin Eisenhower in North Carolina actually the races 4400. So him and Kendall his brother and I sold him to him and he had him on a cruiser. So I don't know what he did with them. But your mom and dad are they still on hickory or my dad my parents were divorced when I was three. My dad's in Florida. Okay. My mom sold her North Carolina house and her husband as dual citizen between Canada in the US. He's a licensed master captain, so he runs like private private yachts for you No big, big private yachts. So they go back and forth between Canada and the US, you know, kind of regularly. Oh, very cool. So how long has he been a captain like 30 years 40 years something like that. Yeah, he's pretty much done it since he was a kid you know, he's actually my mom's his first wife you know he's in he's in his 50s you know so that that was he just been on about since he's just been traveling the world and about pretty much until he decided he want to kind of slow down and I've been following you know, following like Rob use Nick. I know you know Rob and his his deal that's cool. Yeah, just taking you know his sport Fisher from Panama City Beach to St. Thomas Virgin Islands.

Wyatt Pemberton :

He called me and he was like, Alright, I think it's gonna take four days but man plan on eight Are you like in I was like, man I just can't get away like works really busy. Like I really thought COVID would have made a stop and it didn't it actually got busier. So I had about Yeah, it took him 18 or 14 or something significant. He blew it out of the water like the wrong direction on on time. And this fuel consumption I remember saying like, it was gonna be like 14 to 1700 gallons and it was like 2800 gallons. Just he underestimated everything but what a trip.

Nick Nelson :

And then we've got, I mean, there's some cool stuff in between there. There's some rough stuff we go. We got to Florida quite a bit with my dad being down there. We have family that has been in the boat industry since you know, back in the 50s and 60s, so even sport fishing and doing all that stuff and you know, Shawn Shawn Stroud, his UTV guy was a

Wyatt Pemberton :

good buddy of mine and we kind of partnered up and I keep all his race stuff out here. So we go back and forth in here in Fort Lauderdale and go fishing and so yeah, there's some there's some rough water out where he was headed. So we have a good time out there on the boats though. Man, I don't lose my number. You hit me up for that because I've really grown accustomed to like in the water here here in the last, you know, 510 years. Love it. Love for sure. And then we've got Eric Kima linker, he's now somehow developed him his way into a boat fairing a boat Uber driver, like taking big shots from point A to point B for folks. Yeah. stuff that's just it seems like what a great adventure I don't think I could commit 40 years to it like your stepfather but I think I dedicate a couple trips

Nick Nelson :

well he's learned some lessons along the way for sure. You know, he's he's very smart about things. So you know, hurricane season comes that boats and dry dock for the yearly upgrades that's not in the water. I mean, it's 107 foot yacht, you know, depending on which one is on time. So it's these are big, big yachts coming out of water, but they're he makes sure that they come out at the best time of the year so that they're safe and they don't want to be out of the water during those times.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Awesome. Your grandfather, who actually getting you guys in Hickory how at least I know the U dub and hickory. He's a very successful businessman. What did he do?

Nick Nelson :

He was in a mining and then moved from mining into trucking. And that's he had a trucking company in Hickory, North Carolina and actually commuted back and forth up to the mountain every day. But that's that's kind of where he settled. So we were in the mountains when I was born, and I was I was born in eighth grade. We lived in the mountains and ended up going back to hickory you know, and my parents got divorced and Then, you know, I stayed there pretty much through through high school and I went to college. You have a sister?

Wyatt Pemberton :

Yeah. Do you? What's she up to these days? She younger older.

Nick Nelson :

She's She's nine years younger. Oh, so she's, she's in North she's in Atlanta. She has a communications degree. So she's worked for Verizon corporate and just doing some stuff like that and finding our own way.

Wyatt Pemberton :

She's not hucking trucks off of 300 foot jumps up Bhisma

Nick Nelson :

we could not be it'd be hard to be any different. That's for sure. Bowling almost every, every low.

Wyatt Pemberton :

So growing up, I know you're a very athletic dude. Yeah, just following you and knowing you for all these years, you're always working out. You're always challenging yourself, like Spartan Race things along those lines. Where you always have like, as a kid, were you always a sports guy as a kid?

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, moving out of the mountain, we were in the mountains. There was nobody to hang it there was no kids really, you know, we were on the mountain and then we got back down to hickory so I started living I just went straight to play it. You know, a big neighborhood. Lots of kids play basketball and stuff every day and football and I ended up just playing all the sports pretty much through high school. Up in the high school, that's where I kind of got where I just really wanted to go the vehicle, you know, Motorsports direction, then there's just things that weren't an opportunity for me, you know, I'd love to race motocross or do something, do certain stuff and it just wasn't wasn't in the cards, the way things were around there. So I had to kind of wait until I was on my own and just kind of go after it by myself, you know, as ultra for developed, like, I stayed in rock crawling forever. And so yeah, it was just, I think it's just the competitive nature more or less, like, it was an athletic thing. I was blessed to have, you know, like, you know, I got, I had good genes, and I had a lot of opportunities to go and be good at sports. And so not doing that anymore. And being so into vehicles and stuff really was kind of the, it was inevitable, I guess, to end up wanting to be competitive on the automotive side of things. Now, have you noticed, you know, in the stuff that you have done in vehicle that your fitness has helped you out? Yeah, I mean, I think a good example of that, I mean, I you know, it's not 100% necessary, you know, there's guys that are not in great shape, they can go out and drive and drive wheels off trucks, you know, I mean, it's not have to do it but I think on the long stuff especially, you know like the Vegas arenas in the Bible and thousands and these even hammers for example, you know, I mean it's it's a rough long day in the heat and just getting beat. But you know with us having that steering failure at hammers and having the crash in the trophy truck, Shawn and I are doing doing almost 90 miles an hour and the thing snapped to the right and sent us for a ride seven times and we didn't have a headache didn't have a sore single muscle. I mean not a scratch on us like we completely like we're 100% good after crashing at 90 and rolling seven times.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I'm glad you won. I'm glad you're safe. We've all seen the helicopter footage of that I wanted to evolve that that wreck here in a little bit. So yeah, hold hold that note because I do want to talk a bit more about exactly how hammers what led up to hammers you'd be in there with your your overdrive trophy truck and and representing ultra four in the T one race. Yeah, that sick I mean, so we feel that we're cheering for you and it just went sideways and actually putting tended on it going sideways yeah although it really happened so mean you get out of high school over there in in Hickory small High School Is that why you played all the sports small town? I don't know how big hickory is No, I mean I

Nick Nelson :

kind of started backing out of it really in high school because that's where I was kind of ready I was like ready to do something different and really always wanted to kind of you know, if I had a choice I could router rode motorcycles every day and done nothing else so once I was able to you know, get a get a car and start doing stuff and working on stuff that really kind of transitioned towards Automotive in high school. So that was kind of the the phase in the change there.

Wyatt Pemberton :

What was your first car

Nick Nelson :

at a Volkswagen Jetta? Yeah, that was Oh, yeah, I couldn't I mean, if I if I had my choice, I would have had you know diesel truck like at the time you know, the power strokes that just come out and they were new and diesel's were starting to be different and kind of faster and you know, cool. But I mean, there was no way I was getting, you know, a $40,000 truck in high school. So it was an everybody was into Honda is in the lower right trucks and all that stuff and I really just didn't want a four cylinder car. And so that was how I ended up with a six cylinder and that thing and we ended up putting the full body kit on it and it won best to show and they had air ride and all kinds of other stuff. That is totally, totally the whole other direction. And I know you

Wyatt Pemberton :

like you can't leave well well enough alone, nothing stays stock ever.

Nick Nelson :

I had receipts and everything and actually that that thing saved me It saved me because I mean they're, they're, you know, they're super safe cars and I was going to my girlfriend's house at the time and I was going to get food and I pulled out of our house and looked down to put the airbags down and had two guys two high school kids were racing each other in stock me like what was it an S 10 I was in a jeep and they were doing it and the dude in the front looked down for a CD and never touched the brakes. So both both of them came in and at and smashed me send it a stop sign. And the car was still running. I still had my foot on the brake because I had I had race seats and artists in it and I was looking out the left side window because everyday bent the seat brackets and everything so bad guys. are

Wyatt Pemberton :

so Wow. Yeah. Daily driven safety right there. We saw some race, some race engineering carryover.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, it was crazy. I mean, the firefighters were like looking. They're like, who's who's in this? Who was in this and they saw me. And then they went and looked down there. And they're like, man, the seats probably saved your back and your neck and everything. So it was a, I guess, a blessing to be in that thing that day.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I mean, how old were you? And what year was that? I was 16. So what? Late 90s?

Unknown Speaker :

Not. Yeah. So

Wyatt Pemberton :

you get out of high school. They're in Hickory new and up. appy state Appalachian State University. Yes, sir, in Boone, North Carolina. And when I found out that was where you were from, it was right around the time that they upset Michigan. And I'll tell you like that, I'm sure that story is still told in that flow state. But I remember being in my house, my first house with my wife, we didn't have kids yet, in having it go down. And I think Sports Illustrated did I think it's still the biggest blowout upset ever in history. Is that about right?

Nick Nelson :

It was crazy. I was I really had I got back to my house, they make you stay in a dorm for the first semester and I couldn't move out yet. So I was in the dorm which was actually in the parking lot of the football stadium. And so I was like I saw what was going on on TV so I just opened the window and watched it happen, and then they tore the goalposts down and ran around through I mean, there was like thousands of people running through town with the goalposts It was pretty crazy

Wyatt Pemberton :

yeah remember the Chancellor or whatever the head of Appalachian State like him saying like he was they delivered like some of the goalposts to his house they're like yeah, let him in

Nick Nelson :

celebrate all Yeah, I mean, we went they went down like the main five lane highway with it and then back up around town down Main Street where the bars are and then ended up in campus like at the end of the day,

Wyatt Pemberton :

because Michigan was ranked number five in the country at that point in time and they'd scheduled this FCS you know like the Division Two guys to you know, you guys were a pad right? This fill filler easy this gimme game Vegas, didn't even have odds on it. That's what I remember, like sticking in my head. You couldn't have even gone in bet on Appalachian State for that game because there were the odds were so blown out there was no market on it. And being now you're in Vegas. It's funny, but then Michigan had paid Appalachian State $400,000 for that game in 2000. I think that was seven. I believe seven. It might have been a bit somewhere in there.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, it was funny man. And it's even in The Longest Yard with Adam Sandler. They even make the joke that they they schedule a team like app state so that they can get that first win of the year. Right. Just to make sure you got it. So yeah,

Wyatt Pemberton :

so how was it going to college? You know, what was the college decision to go to? Appalachian State when I was local to here one hour drive or so? Was that it or follow a girl there? Was there a certain program you went up there for?

Nick Nelson :

Not well is a business school, my mom went there, it was more that I really didn't know what I wanted to do. So I went for, you know, General Business Management. I really wasn't ready to make that choice. I didn't. you're battling what you what you're told you're supposed to do versus like what you want to do and you're trying to find that and it just wasn't there yet. So I just went and went through the motions and, and tried to figure it out while I was there, you know, it just kind of was more or less the you get good grades, you go to school, you go to college, you do your thing, you get a job, you know, I was just trying to follow the program, I guess more than anything at the moment.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Now I'm fully they're completely there with you on in I followed the exact same path. And it was, let me preface it this way. Nick, do you know you want to do today?

Nick Nelson :

I try to figure it out every day still? day I'll let you know, man. We'll figure that out together.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Yeah, you don't grow. You don't grow up as a kid like thinking, hey, I want to you know, I want to do this or I want to do that. Sure. Yeah, a racecar driver is absolutely one I think you you're living out some of that I've got to live out some of that. There's definitely that is in there. But it's like, I want to wake up in a new bid pipeline and build, you know, pipelines every day or trade electricity or whatever. You know, I didn't even know those existed. Those jobs didn't exist, but not not in

Nick Nelson :

a kid's head. I mean, I was in a rock crawl. You know, I didn't have like it. You know, my my stepdad at the time, you know, he was an attorney. We didn't own welders, we didn't have anything. Like I said, I built my jeep with a grinder and a drill and you know, whatever at you but yeah, I'd have actually put it all together and had it all bolted together and ready and had to have somebody come bring a welding truck and weld it for me, because we didn't have any of that. So while I was in business school, I even took like nightclub I went over to the night class, I signed up for a welding class, so I could go like, make my own stuff and use the welders

Wyatt Pemberton :

and while I was in college, and that's where I was gonna ask you here in a little bit, like how did how did that happen? Like, how did you jump to where you're at today? But yeah, no, you do. It's funny the things you do when you're younger, you'll you believe there is this innate thing that you need to do to appease your parents and the people paying for your college or just there's a status quo that you feel like you have to I guess fit yourself in the square box that someone else has of you and then it's not till years later, you look back and like, man, I was an idiot. I should have been my own person from the very get go and knowing it was okay. It's okay to not know what you want to be when you grow up it's okay to not know what degree you should be going after if you're going to college or I don't know I digress

Nick Nelson :

especially like vocational stuff you know like i mean i you know you can go weld and make more than most people in normal jobs will ever make coming out of college not you know obviously the high end professions but when you come out and do you know high end structural or pipeline like you said you can make a good living so and there's nothing wrong with doing that

Wyatt Pemberton :

now these guys kill it I mean they absolutely kill it six figures deep so you have like 200 k 250 k 300 k on the pipeline like over a year those guys working every single day they kill it but then they spent it all

Nick Nelson :

I kids Oh, yeah, you got to get back to civilization,

Wyatt Pemberton :

but they absolutely burn it. So that's how we always find two I've got a couple friends that were former, like pipeline welders and how large they live back in the day and then now what they do today, nothing wrong with what they do today at all. It's just wow, it's a it's a quite the roller coaster. For sure.

Nick Nelson :

That's why you know I settle into that I kind of I really wasn't intending to go into structural. I have a buddy who owns a concrete company and they just really are always having issues getting quality welding and people that are quick more than anything and the one thing that I you know, most people that are listening this probably, especially if they're their builders at all or work on their stuff is to be successful as a custom fabricator. The only way to do it is to be good and be quick at the same time. You know, if you if you take forever you're gonna just sink because you just can't make enough money quick enough. So knowing him for so long, he he threw it out there a couple times, and we kind of, you know, just kind of forgot about it. And then he came back to me one day, and he's like, Hey, we need some stuff done for real like are you interested in so I ran some numbers and put it together and we went after it. And it actually was a pretty good deal. So

Wyatt Pemberton :

yeah, that's current business. We're getting there cuz right now you you live in Vegas and right now, I haven't figured out how you moved to Vegas yet from North Carolina. So how did all right let's connect that.so when you got out of a happy state. Did you kick around North Carolina for a while before heading to Vegas.

Nick Nelson :

No as I was, you know, I had like jobs and did you know whatever I mean, I always I always worked. Even when I leave, I still get dropped off before I could drive I, you know, I still had jobs and worked when I was in high school and had jobs at like, you know, tires, oil changing and stuff when I was 1617 work your way up, you know, just trying to be around cars really more more than anything. When I left there. I left I left upstate, like, about a semester early and because I just I knew that's not I knew I wasn't gonna sit at a desk and and I saw the only way I thought I could maybe make a change was go to a vocational some kind of vocational school. And I end up going to wyotech and Wyoming for a year.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Oh, awesome. So

Nick Nelson :

yeah, Jesse combs and I were actually had some of the same teachers and were there within a within the same year actually.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I mean, it is a small world once you end up kind of in this motor sports in the fabrication world. There's not a ton of names in that space.

Nick Nelson :

No, it was cool. And so, you know, it really wasn't what I thought it would be. It's a very nice place like they haven't they have a lot of really cool equipment. And you can use everything, there's still a business, I think, in a sense, you know, and then they have a really nice facility there. And it really comes down to what you make of it. Because really, they'll put you through just to get you through, you know, to help you get a job as like an oil, an oil change guy or a guy changing parts at a dealership. So like, for example, I think I was the I was the first or second person to ever build a chassis and chassis fab. And even as long as the school have been there,

Wyatt Pemberton :

well, it's one of those things right, it's you get out what you put in. So if you're willing to put in a whole bunch, you're gonna get out a whole bunch.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, and I think the thing I was looking for is, you know, I, I've been always dreaming of building a tube chassis, like guts, you know, like Britain jeeps and um, you know, you always wanted to make that next step to custom stuff. So I really was looking for somebody to help me really jump forward, already, like kind of gone to that school and taught myself to weld and spent and figured that out. And so I was, I was trying to figure out all this other stuff and it really ended up being more or less like a kind of, here's the tools do it. Do whatever you know, once you pass your little tests and stuff which you could do in like a day if you were good at if you were good enough, it really was just you basically paid to have the shop open for you. Okay, and so that's kind of how it ended up being and so I just ended up spending the time in there I drew a chassis and built it and that's what I that's what I use this cool for actually.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well then you're connecting some dots from me and tell me if I'm jumping to conclusions here that is, is that how it did when you have wyotech? Is that how you ended up with a relationship with Randy rod out there, Jimmy's four by four?

Nick Nelson :

No actually went back home. Okay. I went back to North Carolina kind of messed around started a little like I went more I actually went back to a heavy equipment company that a buddy of mines dad worked at and kind of still figured that you know, you you would do you had to have some kind of real job really hadn't tried to go after the race like yet. He was high up in the company. It was privately owned company. So I figured out go learn all the equipment. I was a welder. They hired me as their welder too. So I did all their fab work, which was you know, I'd have manufacturers come in We would do fixes on their equipments. And I would build the stuff with with their engineers and stuff like that. And so I got to do some, some kind of cool stuff with big crane companies and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, I just, it wasn't what I wanted to do either. And I was going from work, I'd work all day and then I was running a shop and I'd go do off road stuff at night till midnight, go home, be back to work seven the morning every day. And I

Wyatt Pemberton :

know this is probably a little bit out of order because I want to talk about this like under the Porsche about the chapter, it's like about off road and how you got into it and all that but in my head, mentally I have a mental note that were you in the mud dogs,

Nick Nelson :

though the mud dogs were are like, really close by and so you had like the big Dixie boger guys, which was the group I was in, okay, and the dogs and so we had all of us kind of went and volunteered at the time and one of the guys one of the families had had a farm and so they had quite a bit of land and the guys who were all in the crawl you know, we were it was our that was who we all wheeled with. And so everybody went and built all these trails and they were pretty cool and My dogs had their pet the devil's playground.

Wyatt Pemberton :

That's what it was. Okay. Yeah. So yeah,

Nick Nelson :

so that was the two big groups in that area. And then you had all the guys up, you know, even past North Carolina towards Tennessee, you know, around Upstate. So you had a lot of guys up there too. But that's all kind of different areas.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Where Yeah, you just get as we learned, you know, not being from Appalachia or any part of the mountains in that for that regard. But even just you know, talking to Bleiler and him talking about how the, just the dialects and the people are just different from one mountain ridge over one Valley over one cut over or whatever it is, and so similar down there, where you're at, right where you're from, for sure. And I that's the that's the like, the main thing I get from people when they figure out that I'm from there, they're like, why don't you sound like those people on swamp swamp hunters or whatever, you know, like, that's like they always want to understand why I don't have like a crazy, which I have, I mean my accents there, but it's just not super thick. So I do get that quite often. Yeah, immersing like crawl magazine, like and that's what stuck in my head when I initially started looking at your stuff, man. I was As I remember a specific Mad Dog vehicle that was in a crawl mag and then meeting the guy that down a few years later being a trout Watford and Watford race 4400 and then now developing religion Yeah, it's been a few years ago but I've had a conference set out in where he's at and he took me He came pick me up at the hotel and we went a barbecue there North Carolina and it's cool that you will ultra fours afforded. I'm sure you his legs wise myself. The ability the people that we've met and know from all over the world, and ability to you know, fly into somebody's airport, having meetings, most of them been like, call them but hey, you won't go have some beers. Just catch up. And you're like, yeah, yeah, you know, birds of a feather flock together.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, I've met some some super, super cool people. So many actually, you know, over the years just from racing, and that's people and then I've reconnect like, I ran into Dustin Eisenhower in Moab one day on, on Thanksgiving, I could hear his accent Actually, we were looking for suicide Hill, and we shut the buggies off and I hear this dude yell and I get on my I know that guy and I drive around the cars Dustin's and there's Land Cruiser so you know we like ended up hanging back out again you know cuz we're all out here and then you end up meeting like you said all these people even if you didn't know him even like you know Travis I didn't know Travis at the time really so well but then you know running into them out here with ultra foreign king of the hammers and stuff. So there's a lot of guys that you end up coming together with, like you said, because it's just a common common denominator, right.

Intro/Outro :

Stay tuned. Your talent tank is in full yet.

Wyatt Pemberton :

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Intro/Outro :

Now back to the show.

Wyatt Pemberton :

So what year did you end up actually making the move out West was it after 2010 where you went to kick King hammers the first time are with

Nick Nelson :

us here and Oh a I hear like right in the crash of one great Vegas was down thing goes away I believe

Wyatt Pemberton :

in the day you just live live you got a girlfriend a couple dogs today.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah yeah yeah this guy got the big got the big dogs here and just just doing life man just try to hang in there

Wyatt Pemberton :

alright so I follow on your Instagram you are fully into some serious shooting I want to get that out of the way before we get into some offroad stuff but like you've got a couple 50 BMG as I see here like $7 $7 $7 just thrown it down the range you know, I've never

Nick Nelson :

sold her fire 250 and I was like you know where I was gonna put one round in it and my buddies standing there and he's like, dude, if you're gonna do it, fill it up. Like we got to do it right so I shot if you can see I shot the first one. Let's see what it was like and it was nothing inside is loaded. He actually had had to go ahead and let it go.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Which is perfect. You like once you know who Nick is. You're like, Can you see like, Oh, yeah, yeah, you knew that was gonna happen as soon as you told her that. It was gonna be like, oh man, that is insane. So be no shoot there you guys can I mean, it's almost like the country you can go out to the desert and fire off right?

Nick Nelson :

Yeah man I think the biggest misconception of Vegas is that it's like this we all live on the strip and you know, that's it and we go to bars or clubs all the time. And really it's I mean there's a lot of like a you know, Rob Mac lives here and you have all these all these racers that live here. It's kind of a big central hub. And there's so many trails and so many places to hike and shoot and climb and you know, there's lakes and have a zoo and all the stuff that we have so much stuff right here that we never go to the strip you know, we're always you know, we take the dogs go hiking, go shooting in the afternoon, we can go shooting and be home in two hours, you know, and it's just, it's actually a pretty cool place to live once you get away from the city.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, yeah, I mean, I've had friends that lived there that said, You know, I don't even realize the strip exists unless I go down there like you can live in Vegas and not have to worry about the casinos at all or any of that like Life goes to a busy town.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, just drive by it there Unless Unless like family or some good friends are here or for a reason or SEMA. I don't go to the strip. That's the only way.

Wyatt Pemberton :

How have you acclimated to the con awful heat in the summer.

Nick Nelson :

You never get used to it. It's terrible. No,

Wyatt Pemberton :

it's horrible.

Nick Nelson :

Especially well, like being on the jobsite. You know, I mean, that was really the the hardest part of the welding game was, you know, it's 120 degrees and you got to spend 10 hours wearing leathers stand, you know, boots and 120 degree with the wind blow and 40. So it feels like there's like a fire blowing on you. When I got that hot. The first couple days. I got sick physically, you know, by the end of the day, and so I started to mix it because I was just pounding water and you just could not get enough water you couldn't hydrate so I started mixing in like the bcaas you know, for hydration. And I would alternate back and forth and that was like how I got it under control was that because otherwise you just lose all your water.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I still struggle with that today. I mean, Houston, it's, we're already in the 90s. We had some 95 degree days, the last couple days and I overheated once. I was around 30 years old. I just can't do heat anymore. Man. I get outside fits over 90. I'm done. Like I can't hardly do shit.

Nick Nelson :

I gotta pull in a day bed like it's like yeah, the casino set out by the pool get wet Layla day bed, relax. That's how you beat it. That's how you beat it. Yo.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Hey, so you mentioned last time you mentioned Lake Havasu. You and David Hartman have gotten into some little mini boat stuff. Yeah, a little debt boats a little bit you know, having some fun doing something a little different. So you just recently got in some some Lake Tahoe and one of those How was early Lake time early Lake season down there and one of those little things before we're gonna talk about build them here in a little bit. But

Nick Nelson :

yeah, I mean, the first time we took it out was up in Colorado during the lockdown. You know, we were up in Colorado playing around the river and we had a blast Actually, it was I mean, it was cold still. So it was rough up there because it wasn't ready yet but have a sewer already. You know, we were there last week or two weeks ago and it's already 100 degrees like it is here. We've touched 100 in Vegas already. So it was actually super super Nice I mean and it's already busy too you know that's the boat ramp was so busy it was closed I think by 8:30am it was already to max capacity. So I mean it was it was wide open like spring break wide open already.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well awesome. No I I'm very excited about to talk about those because I have so many questions and I've texted David Hartman about that a bunch of just go out to lunch. They look like fun little little boats to have to dig in your head and out here a little bit. So yeah, man So today, your your business your day to day surprisingly and this shouldn't come as a surprise to some people but I know it will come surprise to some people but you do all your own fab work. I mean, based on this interview, it's obvious you do but I think there's this misnomer misconception via pirating via social media and via use just a race celebrity that somebody else did your fabric, mainly Jimmy's and I know from history like you would, you're building a new car. I know you go off to Cortez and you live off somebody's couch for two months while you build your car. That All right.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, yeah, actually, you know, I guess you kind of asked about Randy, and how that happened. And really, I'd seen you know, his ads and crawl or whatever, you know, for the one piece hoods, and I was I was wanting to build a buggy and I'd never met Randy and a good buddy of mine here in Vegas grew up with him in Cortez. He's a crane operator here in Vegas. And so we were talking about building the new buck, you know, building the buggy to go race king of the hammers. And he's like, Yeah, and I told him about the hood. And he's like, I grew up with that guy. I know him real well. So that's how we ended up at hammers in 2010 or 2009. Maybe nine. Was that the year that Lauren one was at nine?

Wyatt Pemberton :

Jason cheer 1911 or one.

Nick Nelson :

Okay, so we went in 10. And we pitted for Lauren and Derek, and all those guys because we just went out just kind of get a grasp on things. And that's how and that's when I met Randy and so we don't feel for Lauren, and Eric and fix Derek's injector and I wanted a beat and Derek by like, you know, 20 seconds or something crazy. So it was it was like this crazy experience the first time I was there.

Wyatt Pemberton :

There That that was a that was his time to win. Like he talked about everything he did that equaled him not winning like it was his race to lose, and he did all the things to lose it and, and how frustrated he was about that.

Nick Nelson :

It was such a different game back then, you know, like that is just so different. And so after those guys did so well, I kind of saw that Jimmy's would kind of you know, there there would be a way better opportunity to kind of being associated with somebody that has a name in the sport because I was coming from zero and I was building the car in my garage, and the chassis was already done. So I was talking to Randy and I called him after everyone we got home and told him I was what I was doing. And I was like, Hey, I got this chassis, it's already done. But if you want to do something together, you know, I'll buy I'll buy a chassis from you and I'll sell this one and I already had somebody that wanted it so I offloaded it got a chassis from him, had him up like built his first into three quarter chassis because they had never done anything over inch and a half yet. He ended up sitting so they sent me a bare chassis and I built it out and then raced it out. Twice we won blue water after Blue Water ran hammers for the first time in 11. And actually got that's we had a really good run and got into third place lost the drive shaft and ended up finishing 20th and after Randy sauce go from like 50 at the third and the first lap, he's he's like, Alright, this guy can this guy can do some. So I had zero help before that. I think Bulldog winch was like the only guy that gave me anything for that race. You know, that was the one thing that I had you on errors. All

Wyatt Pemberton :

right, this is starting to starting to add on I'm starting to peel back the layers of the Nick Nelson onion. And all this stuff I didn't know about you kind of like I knew enough enough to not know. So that Okay, so that car that you took that year that Jimmy's car. You ran blue water in it now how many more times did you run blue water in that car or maybe a different car.

Nick Nelson :

I only raced that car three times. I raced it at Stampede though the original Stampede you know the one in Reno, and that's how I got my spot at hammers. Because we finished what we finished in the top 10 or 15 or something top 10 and that to get a spot of hammers my first race ever that was the first time I ever drove the car or first time ever race car. In between that and hammers we went and ran the blue water and one blue water. Then we went to hammers got that finish, and I'd bent the axle housing all three times in the front, and both rear spindles. I was like, Dude, this is just not working out. So Randy, and I sat and talked about it. And that's how we told him I was like, man, we got to do something else. You know, I got I thought I did all the right stuff but and you know, this aftermarket 60 in the front and had the 14 volt back and had all the you know, thought we had the good stuff back in the day. You know, the car was probably $30,000 to build and compare Brian compare bought that car. And they ran it for years. And it's it was one of the cars we actually drove and China's still going they're still together to this day.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Oh, wow.

Nick Nelson :

So Randy, and I just were I told him I was like, man, I want to try the arm thing. I think we got to do something different and you know, I'd written in some desert in Vegas, and I was like, man, if you want to, you know, if you want to help me if you want to help me, you know, try to tackle this project and he's like, yeah, if you're willing to go for it, let's do it. So we jumped on that thinking we could do it for like 60 grand, which didn't happen, because that's what I sold my car for. And that's what I had. So that turned into the normal story of trying to build a car obviously,

Wyatt Pemberton :

no, that's all always the way it works. You just have to keep moving it up moving the bar up.

Nick Nelson :

It's kind of so that's a that's everybody asked how I got to the car I have and it started with an 80 $500 cJ and I took all the parts in the CGA put them in the the tube chassis we talked about from wyotech sold it for like 17 or 18. Put that in the Jimmy's car to build it, doubled the money and sold it for 60 and then took all that money to build the IHS car and then sold that car to build the next car. And so I just kept parlay and the money from each car into the next car until I got where we are today.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well and then there for a while you had two cars in the shop, right? You had the big car and you're all wheel drive trophy truck.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, the truck, that truck, but that's a whole long story in itself. And if we can go into that if you want to,

Wyatt Pemberton :

we're gonna get there. That's, I gotta say, later I got to save a nugget for down the road. I'm gonna pull you back to work today. Your own fab work. You're doing prep work. I know you prep all your own cars, all your own prep. And then I think in the past you've prepped for some other people like like Joe de Luci and some guys right

Nick Nelson :

yeah, we've done stuff Joe's a good buddy of mine and you know so we've we've done quite a bit of stuff for them we rebuilt all the suspension on their, on their rental truck they have we changed everything up on it built new axle housings, you know, kind of redid everything on that. And we've done some racing together in Mexico for the thousand and some other just for fun stuff down around San Felipe Bay had a good time down there for sure.

Wyatt Pemberton :

So how did you get into construction? Is it Northrop? Is it Blanton is it some guys you knew in Vegas? I mean, how did you get because you got Going from fab work to doing some construction stuff now and now doing structural steel. What's the connection there? what and how did how did all that come to be?

Nick Nelson :

Well, I mean, I grew up I guess my dad, always he's owned restaurants. And I even had a hotel when I was born like a small mountain hotel. And that went into you know, he's, but he's always built everything himself and always been in construction. And so in a lot of my family majority that that my dad's side of the family has been in construction, which he still is to this day does hurricane tie down systems in Florida run on new builds and stuff like that. So he's, he's been in his whole life and like that whole side of the family I grew up with is into they do a lot of like Scottish style, all stone and timber and iron, like old, you know, castle looking houses in the east coast in the mountains. Oh, so

Wyatt Pemberton :

you had a very deep pool of knowledge to draw from?

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, it was definitely a you know, it didn't just come from nothing. It was I grew up in it when we when I was when I was three years. Two years old. I think we built Nick's restaurant my dad built Nick's restaurant when I was a kid in the mountains inside My little tool belt in my, in my cowboy boots run around, probably breaking things or doing something. But I mean, I kind of grew up in the middle of it.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I gotcha now. So now I'm connecting dots man doing a good job of connecting dots between wyotech and stuff in doing equipment repairs back in North Carolina. And then finally making that decision. I mean, what was the deciding factor to say, I'm pulling up? Because this is a big move, right? You lived in North Carolina, you're from there? What happened? What was the catalyst to say I'm going to move all the way to Las Vegas.

Nick Nelson :

Even when I was I'd always wanted to go to Sema originally back in the day, you know, because they still do the rock crawling at SEMA and everything and so that was like a big deal and they had the was it you rock or whoever was putting it on back in the day they had it right there where now it's like Vaughn drifting and doing all that that was a badass man made rock crawling course. And so when I was out here in Wyoming, I was my first chance to come down, came down and saw Sema, you know, really wanted to do it more and then when I was At home kind of work in doing the rock building rock crawlers and hanging out and had a little business, you know, try to do a little business there I was 21 years old trying to open a fab business while I was also working is, you know, in heavy equipment at the same time doing it doing the candle at both ends thing. And it kind of just got to that point where we tried to put on a race and I tried to partner with a guy to kind of help grow into a real business and it just none of it really worked. And we we put on this race and back in the mountains or back in the woods in North Carolina, and it was cool deal, but it was kind of like a time trial thing more than anything, you know, it really wasn't racing. So it really just, I didn't feel like it was gonna go anywhere being there. So it was kind of that opportunity where it's like, Alright, if I'm gonna do it, I'm not tied to anything. Now's the time to do it. So yep, I'd come out to see him again. And I was like, Yeah, like this is the place it's in the middle of everything. You know, you have the hammers out here that was just starting to happen. And it's just it's it was kind of the central off road map. Uh, I guess in a sense, not like Moab where you know, you have a one crawling place, which is super cool, but it was kind of close to everything good. So I thought it'd be home base.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I think that's why, you know, a lot of best on the desert operates out of Vegas. That's why you have so many racers that race out of Vegas. You've got it seems there's a lot of people that have shops there in Vegas.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, I mean, there's some huge teams out of here, you know, you have Baldwin and the herps. Guys, I mean, they're they're other shops in California, but they have shops here. And, you know, McCarran and all these, you know, all these big guys, there's some rock crawler people here that have kind of come and gone over the years, but there's always still that following in this area. And, you know, hammers is less than four hours from my door. I can be in San Felipe Bay and eight hours and then sanada and seven. And you know, I mean, you can do whatever you want, or you can be in Colorado, Whelan or Utah wheeling in a couple hours too. So it just is hard to be.

Wyatt Pemberton :

You're making a very good argument right now except for this whole summer heat thing. That's the that's the crux of the if you can get through the unbearable 20 degrees. I mean I can sit sit my kitchen, turn the oven on to for 25 and just open the door and sit there and it feels roughly the same as walking on the strip.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah but a fan inside of it so you get the heat blowing on you.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Draw dry out everything on your eyelids need to even be dried out. You know that's like how bad

Nick Nelson :

it's rough man. I won't argue with you for sure.

Wyatt Pemberton :

So you end up as you're parlaying cars parlaying cars. I know the story, actually, you're probably gonna tell me at some point. All right, well, you have to you have to edit that one out. You end up on nitto tires.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, that was kind of that thing you know. So, you know, I made the jump to Randy Jimmy's. And once he saw that I could drive he actually he I like he got behind me. And he was the only dude that did like I had no, I had zero help. Like I said, I don't mean like, I mean, I upset like, it was so funny. That Bulldog helped me out with the winch because it was kind of like that. It's such a small thing, but it was like the very first piece you got and you're super stoked about it. You know? It And then when I got with Randy, Randy put me together with rad flow. And Glen and we had a good relationship and it was awesome. We won the championship with those guys. And that same time, Randy, I didn't have tires because I was I was paying for bfgs for crawlers and I had like, I didn't even go home with four good tires after hammers with sticky collars on you know, I finished the race in the mall. I walked out the next morning and had another flatters you and had no extra spares. So once we had sold that car and got the DI Fs car started, Randy knew, he's like, Alright, you know, I'm worried just work the deal with Neto for them for you know, cotton and Lauren and Derek, and I still really was just starting to scratch the surface and and, you know, people to figure out I was even there and Randy went out on a limb and gave me like eight tires that were off his contract, and they lost it when they saw my car

Wyatt Pemberton :

full nuclear

Nick Nelson :

melasma like Mel Yeah, it was it was Chernobyl like it was bad.

Wyatt Pemberton :

And so the story I was told was You were in Cortez the picture surfaced on the Internet of your new car on iOS and you basically had to jump in a truck and drive to LA and sign some contracts like same day or something was that is that too far off?

Nick Nelson :

Close. I can get used tires here easy. So really, when even when I ran that Stampede race, I didn't even have crawler like crawlers. I couldn't afford him. So I bought us tires for my buddy on a trophy truck team that had kr desert tires on the car. So we were racing on desert trophy truck takeoffs that were used. And we just ponied up and bought six crawlers for hammers that year. I had a bunch of those cheap takeoffs. So I built the car on cars, the desert tire bfgs so no one had seen it yet. We showed up at the lake bed and since Randy Ray and I talked about it, and he's gonna give me that, like, you know, the eight tires or whatever, we already had nitto on the fenders to help ease the pain or whatever was gonna happen. Right. And yeah, that's when they melted down. They found out so they told me I couldn't even get in my car. Like they had to have a contract signed. They decided to let me run them. But yeah, they brought people out like to the lake bed there and made me sign the contract before I could drive the car.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Wow. So the story I'd heard was very similar. Well, I mean, it could be

Nick Nelson :

your right there as close.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Yeah, I just saw some pictures. Just a couple. Oh, let's call it a week ago, two weeks ago. Now I have a very, very well known big name driving a car that had nitto stickers all over it, but it had bfgs and his quote was, these are the best tires I've ever driven on. And that's what was Luckily this guy doesn't have social media but whoever post it I mean, I was in tears laughing like, part of it was ribbing. But at the same time, you know, we're kind of at this level you're in you are you're at this level, that guy's at this level, that you kind of can't rip there when it's real money. It's real businesses. It's real dollars. It's real people's livelihoods

Nick Nelson :

in its man. It's a big deal. Especially when you're if you're in Yeah, like where are we In and we've been fortunate to have really the same partners almost this and since that like first year to change up, we really have probably only changed like two partners the entire time. So I'm really thankful to have had like, you know, good products and good relationships with all these people over the years. But Randy was a big like, that was kind of the point, I guess, as Randy was a huge part of that because I would have never gotten the like, you know, KMC at the time, he kind of facilitated the KMC deal, the NATO deal and the RAD flow deal, which was the only way I made it to races. That guy, I couldn't have the money to do it without having that that help.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, I think I need to get Randy on here. I've stopped and Seaman Cortez a couple times. Now I need to just I need to interview him and talk talk to me so quiet though. He's such a cool dude. But I get and I can gather why you wanted to. readymade team like just set up and we've talked about this in the past with other guys. The leverage you get from a multi multi car attack on something like the hammers, you know, the jimmies Army that's legit. There's a lot of effort that goes into each guy. But when it's this team effort, you get a share notes. It's this shared in the winds shared in the wrench and shared in the tears, the pain. That's kind of what this whole sport and family and whole deal is about. Anyway, it's this camaraderie.

Nick Nelson :

It Yeah, for sure. You know, like Jason bland was one of those people I met the original Stampede, and he could drive so he was really, really good in the rocks. And that's how we kind of ended up hanging out was, there's just people plugging the trail up, and we're trying to pre run and we all kind of we kind of took some hard lines around everybody and ended up running in together and ended up having, you know, we started having beers afterwards, and that's how Blanton and I ended up being friends and then I wanted to help him kind of get in a better car and so went to Randy and Randy was like, Yeah, let's do it. So kind of got Jason in there and they kept you they kept growing over the years people kept just kind of, you know, accumulating Randy was kind of building this little, little bit but effectively became, I guess, the Jimmy's army. Like he said,

Wyatt Pemberton :

This is my contract. This is a Jimmy's car specific tangent on the rear trailing arms right you know the rear four link on y'all scars, the jimmies cars you have the trailing arm is actually the upper link with the your shock bypass mounted to the upper link, not the lower link I get. One reason to do that would be to keep the bypass in the coal carriers are out of the rocks, you know, they're more protected higher up, but by moving them up, is it you put them in the air flow they can stay cooler but you also have a you know, a weight transfer because those things are pretty high. So now they're further up on the chassis. I've never heard anyone will be honest, I've never asked the question. What's the the Genesis behind that idea of doing it so differently than what we see across all genres of offer?

Nick Nelson :

The first kind of reason we did it, and it was just for ground clearance more than anything, you know, because hammers was kind of King at the time. We weren't really doing these big races, but that was kind of the point the IFRS car was to find a way to be fast. Be able to do the rocks. And Randy had designed the the straight axle car for me, you know, I mean, I just bought one of his cars, the first you know, a bar one of the bare chassis whatever first and really had no input on it at that point, other than the way I finished it moving into the car, it was it was new ground for all of us. So, I mean, and I will ask questions and dig and do whatever I can to understand things as best I can. So he was really open, he's like, Hey, I'm gonna help you like, you know, I'll give you whatever I've got. And then let's you know, we kind of put our heads together and came up with every bit of knowledge we could figure out to try to build a better car and I really started to understand suspension geometry at that point and that's when I decided to start understanding shock tuning and really what makes things work and why they work the way they work and and the biggest argument I've ever seen people saying that that doesn't work is you'll see people like on pirate or you know our Facebook say like, oh, if it was better, BJ Baldwin would do it. Okay. There's never a theory behind it. It's always just the if they would Good, this guy would run it. And but if you look at pro Ford trucks, a lot of pro Ford trucks run a similar setup that I do, and those trucks have to corner. And my thing was I wanted ground clearance and I wanted the truck to corner. And I don't want, you know, I want it to be positive. It's I mean, we get into geometry and all kinds of stuff, but it effectively just changing the roll center height. And there's things that come with that. And we just address it with a sway bar, everybody runs a sway bar, it's not like I have to run a sway bar and this guy doesn't, I might just run a little bit different, like diameter bar. But you know, that car, all my cars, I mean, if you go back and look through all the pictures, when that's when somebody talks, talks bad on and I'm like, you know, find a picture of the of my car getting out of shape. They just they they usually handled really, really well.

Wyatt Pemberton :

It's kind of ridiculous, and that's, you know, how well they sail, you know, and that's kind of where we went with your viral content and how many times you've jumped it and how many videos I've seen and how we lead out of this whole conversation tonight. Along those lines was I can't believe how flat they sail.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, we do. We really, really, really put a lot into shock tuning and feel like that's where you're supposed to start with a car like a car shouldn't go to a race, just to go to race, your car should go get tuned, it should be on as you go straight to the dyno and then straight to shock tuning before it ever goes anywhere else. And you know, it's not a make three turns and call it a day. I mean, you have to you have to go out there and ride through the terrible day, the terrible beginnings to get to that point, we'd never settle. It wasn't like, Oh, we had a good shock Training Day. Now the car is great, we would get it as good as we could, and then we'd go race it, and then we're like, Alright, like, it's good here. But it needs to be better doing this. So we'd fix that, and then the car gets faster. And then we need to, you know, we need to tweak this and it becomes this, like, this thing where, you know, basically, we got to that point nowadays where I couldn't run the last car flat out because the car was just too fast for the components that are available today. I mean, obviously you've kind of seen the results of that

Wyatt Pemberton :

on that yellow car, the number 40 Ultra for 4400 car that uh that you just recently sold. What? Like, what was the weight balance of that car? Was it fairly 5050 or 2525 2025? Or was it biased a little bit to the back or

Nick Nelson :

not, it was like 5149. And so was my other the original if S car actually came out about that way because that car at the time nobody had done it, we put the fuel tank in the front so that we didn't have this just super rear heavy iOS car because that was kind of the thing, the car all the cars are out there all rear engine, rear cell, you know, rear everything and they would just they wouldn't climb well because no front weight. So we had you know, I built a custom cell to fit in the front to get some weight on the front of the car. And then I did Khaleesi you know, I really wanted to move I needed more fuel and you just can't get enough in the front. So that's how we came up with the mid midship. So it ends up actually going down onto the driver's seat and everything too. So it's nice and low.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Now I can vouch for that. I mean, I my car was everything in the back. And that's why there's I don't think that there's a picture of it anywhere climbing anything because I just didn't. I didn't They're put there, but with the thing go 130 across big whoops, yes. And it loved them. And it just sat back and just ate. No. And that's, that's a good thrill climbing rocks app was the compromise was one of them.

Nick Nelson :

I think we finally you know, like, I guess it was kind of the culmination of, in the beginning, I was kind of running the Jimmy's car, because they had experience and time and they had a good, good platform and resale was another big part of it too, because I knew I would want to, I would need to get that money out to go do something else. And I thought I would get more. And then Randy, and I became, you know, end up becoming such good friends. And then it was it was nice to be able to kind of turn the table and actually bring him technology and help him advance his product by helping him with all the suspension geometry and and giving them better ideas and ways to make things kind of progress. You know, and Lauren does the same thing and kind of, you know, we all kind of put our two cents in and try to come up with the best possible outcome. By the end of the day,

Wyatt Pemberton :

well, I think you hinted at like value in the racecar at the end of the day. At the end of the year at the end of the season. We see it in in go karts and kart racing, where a cart that is one year old is actually more valuable than a cart that's brand new. And the reason being the cart that's brand new, has no testing on it, no tuning on it, it hasn't had any the bugs worked out versus a car after season one with a top tier team. It's had tuning it's had the bugs worked out, it's had any problem it's gonna have has happened. And now it's a shakedown dialed car that a guy could buy it totally turnkey, get in and go out. And he's a contender that weekend, versus going through the trials and tribulations of figuring out it didn't work or working out bugs and all that BS.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, I mean, I think that's why my car sold so quickly, you know, Khaleesi sold so well and the Canadians bought it and they came out and you know, they're super good people and nobody knew who they were really. And they came out and qualified went in the top 10 or top 15. And the first time The dude probably had like not even 100 miles in the car and he just beat 90 other dudes who've been there and have cars dial by jumping in this car

Wyatt Pemberton :

but those are the guys were like the spirited trail riders right

Nick Nelson :

well you know there's there's guys that are for real and there's guys that are out there that fun part of the game

Wyatt Pemberton :

that was actually probably too too many cheap shot jobs on a I think they did a really badass thing a couple weeks ago or a week ago with his race doing the oh geez. Plus the kings and then he kind of I felt a little bit watered down when he opened it up to kind of everybody that was able to show up and do their trail ride. But I think it was a really cool deal. I seen Jr. Leave on a land rush start with his original co ah winning Bronco with the current owner in the passenger seat. Just had, I don't know it felt like it felt cool to watch that it felt like wow, like history being like coming full circle on that event. Now they did a good job.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I remember racing against that thing in 2011 You know, it was it was out there still going hard and it still is to this day.

Intro/Outro :

Stay tuned. Your talent tank is in full yet.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Do you know what the entire 2020 Ultra for racing 4400 class king of the hammers podium had in common, brand new motor sports custom machine. This small family owned machine shop in Fort Wayne, Indiana has been advancing offroad technology since 2003. By proud veteran owner Stan Haynes and his son Brandon and a talent heavy staff committed to pushing the Motorsports performance envelope if those names sound familiar, they should stand up Brandon had been offered racer since before kena hammers was a thing and both are pillars of team Indiana. I'm always talking here on the talent tank about supporting those that support you. I'm struggling to think of a sanctioning body that Brandon hasn't supported in rock sports ultra for we rock pro rock just off the top of my head and I support these guys myself. I Current daily driven prerunner Chevy has numerous one off custom pieces on it from rear axle flanges to custom five eighths inch lug nuts. I set the current branding ideas and they made them a reality between the brake lines a forged 4340 axle shafts all the way to their custom billet 300 m shafts branding has you covered with pretty much any custom axle shaft any spline with no size or length restrictions need a rare oddball shaft for your humalog they have those as well sway bars a large inventory of rod ends, big and small. They're amazing specialized lightweight racing brakes and unit bearings and numerous bolt patterns onto their line of custom carrier bearings and u joints in 1480 and 1550 flavors and about Miss mentioning their amazing milled out aluminum suspension components 7075 billet aluminum links and trailing arms. If you haven't seen these you're missing out on some very aesthetically pleasing pieces of hardware. Brandon prides themselves on quality, service and value probably making parts that were made in the USA moniker No matter if it's for your daily driven Jeep Toyota, Chevy prerunner or something more serious Like your rock bouncer ultra for or trophy truck you're covered with a call to Indiana that I mentioned I've metal and speed racing team that runs a brand new axles at over 300 miles an hour. Yeah, to ensure you eliminate your downtime while recreational wheeling this weekend, reduce your time in the shop turning wrenches on repairs or looking to put your race car on the podium call Stan and Brandon Brandon 2604678 to eight or on the web at Brandon motor sports.com. Brandon is a full service machine shop that can handle everything from one off to production runs. If they don't have it, they can make it

Intro/Outro :

now back to the show.

Wyatt Pemberton :

So we've got some new racers, we talked about new racers getting in cars, you know that they're dialed in, worked out and that's the value that you know a guy like you can bring to the table for your new cars. You build it, erase it and then it's now it's shaking down. It's ready to continue to win continue to put guys on podium. We had a guy come in a couple years ago wanted it you know big name wanted to get his feet wet in the sport wanted to open up different avenues for his marketing partners different avenues in revenue streams for his business. And you know that guy's name is Vaughn getting jr he's a world famous drifter he came in he did his homework and he reaches out to Randy and he's in having a car built what was the conversation in there where one or both or all of those guys called you to come out and or was it Lauren involved call you and say hey, do you have time to shake down this car and work on this car and kind of get Vaughn comfortable with rocky the his Bronco as you were pretty involved?

Nick Nelson :

Yes bonds you know avanza smart guy he understands the game and knew that he didn't know what he needed to to walk into it and make that car fast, you know, fast enough to go race and or in wanting to learn stuff and you know, he's one of those people that's you know, people have different opinions of everybody. Until they meet somebody, and he's really open to. He was super open to listening and wanting to work with stuff. And so Randy asked me to tune the car, do the shocks and stuff on it. So we got it to Vegas did all the shock tuning on it, got it pretty good. You know, we still needed a little work. We were trying to find some springs and do some stuff and get it all dialed and that's kind of how and then we did it, put it out on the dyno and then I end up going out with him to Johnson Valley for a weekend and kind of getting his feet wet. And you know, he was he had never really he driven well he driven the the spec car the year before. So that was his time in a car he'd never driven anything I Fs anything aside from that spec car and so he had a little bit of an idea about what he was in for so we spent the weekend out in Johnson Valley kind of going over running some high speed stuff and working on you know that we were at me and Vaughn have joked about the other day about the bump because you know he his first bump was pretty rough iOS and there was some pretty violent stuff going down and and now you know He's gotten it gotten a pretty figured out and he's doing well and really did good in that other class. And now it's moved up to 4400 to being successful there. So I think he's smart enough to put the right people in place to help him where he doesn't know. And he's willing to listen, you know, it's some people you can tell to do something. And I've worked with a lot of guys over the years, and I'll try to help them like set up and keep corner speed and do things and you really have to have faith that it's gonna work. You know, and I guess he was one of the easier people because he's used to backing into a wallet 90 miles an hour, so and I told him to just not lift and throw the car inside, you know, back the car and and stand on it. He just did what I told him to do, and it was awesome. And then that's all you know, once you tell him once, he's gonna figure he'll figure it out from now on. Now.

Wyatt Pemberton :

He's a student of the game like he is. He's very serious. He's very cool. He's very laid back. But he's also intense at the same time and takes everything so just so seriously, and I think that's, for me that was really refreshing to be able to work with the times. I've been with him. To work with a guy that takes everything as professionally and seriously as he does,

Nick Nelson :

yeah, it's nice when you when you go and and you put your time in and somebody will utilize it, because there's so many times that we tried to help people in the ultra world or just in the race where I'm not bagging on anybody, just, you keep telling them and keep trying to help them do something and they're just not either not willing, or they're just, you know, not in that frame of mind to go there. And so it's kind of a waste of time, in a sense, if they're not willing to commit and go after it.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Yeah, sometimes it takes a you know, some sleeping on it and some coming around to it or, you know, your the pads weren't ready to cross like that was a bridge that you were ready to cross the bridge hadn't even been built for them yet. And then, you know, the light will come on down the road, they'll be like, Oh,

Nick Nelson :

yeah, I think ultra for was quite a bit more. It was a grassroots sport in the beginning. You know, it was kind of a sport that everybody could go out and kind of everybody had a chance in the beginning. And that's, that's gone. You know, I mean, you see how fast the cars are today and Like how much fun Lauren myself and cheer had battling off the lead hammers you know and and just playing that game and and you're trying to find that find that slow enough speed that's you know you go and fast is the easy part it's going slow enough is the hard part slowing are the guys who are serious. Yeah, I mean because when you get if you're not scared and you're real and you're willing to let it and go for it you have to you can back that down but if you're not willing to go there then it's really you know, there's nothing you can do about that. You can't teach speed. No you can you can slow it down sorry if they just won't go is there's not a lot you can do with it.

Wyatt Pemberton :

So open up the like the like the Vaughn getting the nitto can of worms and in some of that stuff that is opens up some crazy doors for you. And you actually mentioned we mentioned a car a little bit ago about still running around in China. You've had the opportunity based on all these little relationships and all these little ins and outs and your credibility and What you've been able to do behind the wheel and market yourself, you've had some opportunities to race in China. You recently did Auto Salon deal over in Saudi Arabia last fall.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, I mean, the you know, even you know, Blanton actually was one of the people that kind of helped facilitate that deal in China. And it kind of, you know, it was a weird that was a super weird deal in China. There's a lot of things going down. And at the end of the day, all of us that went kind of stuck together, to try to make it a legit deal. And obviously, like they were still doing whatever they were trying to do with that. We had a blast over there. Robby Gordon ended up over there. You know, we had a whole we had Jeremy from gear works. We had our whole crew with us it was we had a blast. It would have been cool. If it would have possibly turned into something but it's a hard place to be. It wasn't much of a vacation if we didn't have you know, but having all the homies together made it a good time. And then Vaughn, you know, Bond was the connection for Vaughn and Lauren were the ones that brought me in for the Auto Salon because they needed an extra truck and so that Worked out super cool you know it was it was a blast and we went over there and just had fun and put on show for people which you know really I think is maybe why I get to do those things because they know that we'll do entertaining things more than more than just go you know drive around they know we'll we'll do we'll do whatever people want to see.

Wyatt Pemberton :

And what was that was that in Riyadh yeah Riyadh yep yeah it looked really cool and all the all the pictures coming back and all the video coming back it did it look like you guys put on a show. But you've done some stuff very similar. You know the, I call it like the parking lot drifting with the parking lot index. You know, everybody is seen video of like Lauren or Casey curry, you know, full full all four tires, blowing smoke, rolling smoke, and then throw the car sideways at you know, 40 5060 miles an hour. They look cool. I mean, an ultra for rolling smoke off for tires. There's nothing cooler. I mean, there just really isn't.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, I think Lauren, I mean not to do it tomorrow. I think he was the first one that that did it good. You know, that really went for it. And I don't I don't know that. I mean Casey's never Casey did the jump thing but he didn't really get down and kill tires for this but Lauren and I and then Lauren, I got to do it together. It just kept progressing into this like, let's see what we can make the truck do. And it's pretty ridiculous what you can get away with

Wyatt Pemberton :

and Campbell's I've seen a waylynn who has done some of that some of that work. And so I mean, what were those all gone down like Sema? ls fast?

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, no enthusiast days, probably the biggest ones because they just turn us loose, but no time. Like there's really no time limit or anything. It's really just how much you're willing to beat your junk to death. And they're, they're all about it. So and we're giving rides You know, there's people in the car that have never, you know, never been in an off road car and you shoot them over the jump and then and then turn the car you know, back backwards on payment at 71 with all four tires smoking and they're just they just have no idea what to think about. sensory overload. I mean, I had like, you know, Like a 60 year old woman that works at NATO in the car, and she just got out and she just gave me this huge high five and a hug. She was like, the coolest thing she's just thought was amazing. So it's cool. I really enjoy that kind of stuff. Because even the people watching now they'll come out and they'll just be like, Man, this is like one of the one of the raddest things I've ever seen. You know, it's it's something different than what they've seen before. And yeah, so I think that's the most fun is just making people enjoy it. And and everybody's having a good time.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, I mean, I think that goes in with, you know, I saw, you know, having to stock you a little bit here. Your LinkedIn connection says, I think your job is a viral content creator. Is that right?

Nick Nelson :

sunlight bad, I guess. You gotta make it sound good.

Wyatt Pemberton :

No, it sounds great. Sounds great. So in so that's, we've kind of led there. You do have some racing history to back it up. Right. I mean, you won ultra for national championship points championship a couple years ago. It wasn't very long ago. 17.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, I think that was 12 Yeah, we won the championship and we got Sportsman of the Year that year, which was super cool. That was that was a rad thing to get, you know, on top of it. And, you know, I when when Randy and I built that car, when we sat we were sitting down having a Pacifica you know that that midnight after working 17 hours or whatever for day at seven in a row or you know, you just lose track of it and he's like, What's your goal this year and I was like gonna win a championship and you know, we're just trying not to kill it like to try not to die from exhaustion to get this thing done. And, and we did, we went out one championship that year. And then after that, it was kind of like, Alright, what's next? And it was, it was fun winning the championship. But But we drove I drove a totally different way that year, I drove to finish every mile of every race guaranteed, and never the whole time you just feel like you're being reined in. Like you you're not able to just go out and have have fun. And so after that, it was like, all right, we did that we prove we can do it. Now let's see what we can make these cars physically do

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, I think that's part of the, you know, value in the team effort. I think that's the value in the strategy, that that was the goal that you set out and you stuck to it and you accomplished it. And then you're a guy that didn't say, Well, I did it once. I don't feel think I'm lucky. I need to do it again. You said all right, I checked the box. What's next?

Nick Nelson :

I think my big thing for me and that's where we're at now the reason we built the auto drive trophy truck was to kind of show everybody what these like the what these cars are capable of, you know, because we all we all laugh we still joke to this day, like when we go do something with desert trucks or whatever and an ultra for car and you know, they'll people will say something like, oh, man, it's just an old This is an old rotten donkey. No, don't worry about it. Just kind of keep rolling with the same joke. That was what we mean. It was kind of a joke. The cars were so slow back in the day and you were around. We you know, we all wrote we drove them. They were rough and they weren't fast and they just weren't built with racecar parts like they are now. And so we really wanted to try to turn that around and show people what they can do.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well you were one of the first guys to turn heads in offroad outside of ultra 440 400 with a rock sports in the desert community. You showed up at the Bluewater best in the desert it's a two day event and you put on a clinic

Nick Nelson :

yeah I think actually that was that was one of the for the first time I felt like we were actually like you know we're making headway we're going the right direction here like we we qualified overall third I think intro back in one

Wyatt Pemberton :

trophy truck classroom you know Unlimited, the best of the best the best in the desert like that's the race monitor best in the desert. And you put it down you shut down and you it everyone crane their necks open their eyes. And then that was day one did you guys close out day one with you in p one.

Nick Nelson :

I think we were or second. I think we were a second I think we ended up we started third and ended up second began when we got a our GPS shut off. Back And that's why we run to GPS is to this day, there was a kind of one of those left school of hard knocks lessons because we got to the top of the hill at the end of a road. And they had all the skull and crossbones, and arrows, and we thought we were going the wrong way. And our GPS is off. So he turned went around the mountain the wrong way. So we got a, we got a penalty for that. It moved us actually, I think from first or it was either first or second back to like, you know, the weeds or something. But that was but I pulled up to Casey and I told him, he was waiting for us and we pulled up and we're like, Hey, we we screwed up. We lost GPS. And he's like, yeah, we figured it was unintentional. Because I mean, it was in front of 1000 people. It's not like we meant to do it. He's like, yeah, that happens. It's cool. We have a 15 minute penalty we'll get after again tomorrow. You know, he was super cool about it. He understood and we gathered our stuff back together,

Wyatt Pemberton :

but the damage was done. The people that already recognized I think Shannon Campbell had been out there was Shannon there that year as well. And Shannon also had some very amazing side by side door to door action with somebody and just walked away from them in the rough stuff. His car Ask bouncing left or right, you know, tank slapping down the whoops. But you know, Shannon, he wasn't gonna let out right?

Nick Nelson :

No, no, not at all.

Wyatt Pemberton :

So then I show up. I will say maybe it was the next year. And Casey comes up to me. And this is Casey folks, you know, just just an amazing man, you know, said we lost him a few years ago, but he came up and he said, so. So you're Nick Nelson us and I'm not Nick Nelson. Well, Nick Nelson came out here with a four wheel drive king of the hammers car. And he did pretty good. So he set the bar pretty high for you, you're gonna be able to keep up to that. I was like, MC set up pretty, pretty high bar. Casey, I'm going to do as good as I can. Okay. And he goes, he gives you like the thumbs up the case. Thumbs up. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but that to show up like he was very happy to have us there, but to the, you know, immediately we got compared to you and the clinic that you put on because everyone had apparently talked about it from then on like, these are no longer rock donkeys. You can't talk about them like that you can't put them in the back. They're out running trophy trucks today,

Nick Nelson :

we missed a quarter in qualifying to add, we totally just missed a 90 right and still qualified third. And we thought we were gonna be in like last or something because we've missed that corner. And so we went out, we are on we were on the boat sitting in boxes on the river, you know, the bar hanging out having a beer and the text came in and we were 30. We were like, holy shit, you know? We're actually there. So we were we were bummed, like so bummed because we burned we would leave actually would have had the ball, but the time we lost so we were so bummed but so excited at the same time. I remember being like the most bittersweet feeling ever.

Wyatt Pemberton :

No, I mean, that's I had not I didn't get a third but to finish qualifying at the middle, one of the years in finish and go back and we're all kind of hanging out the trailer and there was like, hey, let's walk over and see like, where you're at. And there was 90, I think there was 90 trucks in class ones in that race and we were 16 and Nicole 516 was like are you in the names that were after me were like guys that like you know I'm just a redneck from Texas Yeah, I've watched these guys on TV you know looking up to them watch them on you know dusty glory, you know, stalking them on on you know race desert all those places like these guys are you know these are legends and in a building you know rub elbows when it comes to timing and skills it's validating there right it's so validating

Nick Nelson :

it is I mean we got some of that with that our first hammers you know, we really went out there expecting to be like, but guys the new guys in the back and for to be passing all these guys who are who are in hammers, you know this, our first one was like that. All right, like we actually might be all right here, you know, we have a chance to do some work with this. And so I do remember that, that that feeling is kind of what makes you makes you want to push and makes you want to do better. Like each time you know, you're like alright, like we were here, we can do this and then next time you try to do better and better and better and better and better. And that's this. This Never ending. You know you're chasing it.

Wyatt Pemberton :

So king of the hammers 2020 you've got the all wheel drive trophy truck out. It's fresh back off the boat after being in Saudi Arabia over there in Riyadh for the Auto Salon deal you get in on the Thursday the T one race you did you're doing pretty good. Walk us through your prep and walk us through like the decision like to go ahead and sign up and race that event.

Nick Nelson :

Well, the year before David called me and he's like, hey, if you want to spy I know you got both trucks because we were trying to sell the trophy truck at the time obviously, like I didn't intend to have two trucks. So I built Khaleesi or started it with the full intention of having that money back before it was over you know, like I would get it sold in the meantime and then would you know i'd be alright, so then that turned into obviously like a same as it always is trying to finish a car. It's always a nightmare. And that was nightmare times five because now I didn't have that money back. So it was like every credit card everything you can do to make cameras you know and then we went out last the motor and when Without having that money, there was no way. You know, David, they would give me a T one spot. So I could run both races and then I just couldn't afford to do it. There's just no way like we barely made it there with the other car. It was scratched and pennies together to get there. So the next year, when we since we didn't have Khaleesi, I was like, Alright, if you know that the trucks here will go for sure. You know, we got to try it. We got to get try to get this thing out where it needs to be one time at least because that trucks just been it's been like the curse ever since that thing was done. And there's a whole story behind that thing, which is a long one, but we were hoping to kind of knock the knock back curse off of that thing. And obviously, it didn't happen and we haven't quite the other way.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Yes, you're having a finishing issue, right?

Nick Nelson :

That thing is just been I mean, we can go test for five miles or 500 miles and not have a single problem. And then we got a qualifying and break a rocker arm in the motor or, you know, steer the steering bolts off at that time. I mean, it's like a mile seven. You know, it doesn't matter if we test five miles or 500 it just like right there. Every time we had some problem with that truck,

Wyatt Pemberton :

there was a point where you and Lauren were both talking about building like 6100 trucks and then they became all wheel drive trucks and then Lorne didn't and then you did

Nick Nelson :

well so I guess to get into that the the whole I was originally gonna build a pro for that shop was it that truck was supposed to be a pro for because I really really liked glenallen I really liked you know, all the short course racing we were doing with ultra for and I you know kind of had to move into that sport where you know, you have TV coverage and you have fans in the stands and where you could maybe make actually make it as a private tier driver. You know, that's your probably your best shot money wise, you know, being able to bring in money. So nitto was trying to they were peddling you know, they were sponsoring the torque series. So we flew in to Sturgis during torque talk to BJ Barnwell who owned it at the time it was trying to work this whole deal out and the tire never came together. And so we were months and months and months on standby like the truck was crew chief lined up who was Ricky Johnson's crew chief when he won his championships in torque, he was gonna be my crew chief. So he had, you know, of course notes, setup notes, had built the trucks for Ricky. And we were ready to go to laser with a truck and never got a tire. And I didn't want to burn the bridge with Neto. And we had the off road tire and I had a handshake deal for an engine program. It wasn't a contract on paper, it was a handshake. So because I had an engine deal to build a trophy truck, which I would have never done knowing that we couldn't afford to run the trophy truck without like a full engine sponsor, right well as the trucks so we decided to build the trophy shot because we had the opportunity for the motor. The we had the parts sitting there, we had everything ready to go. So we built that instead. And halfway through events outside of my control changed and that deal went away. And I got so we got left for the truck with no engine package and no help at the end of the day. So that's the story that nobody really knows about that truck.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, you and I have had this discussion. Just about Things that you can stress about things you can't stress about and keeping your mental game spot on. And you can worry and stress all you want, but you should only work and focus on stressing about things you can control, and then learn to, I guess, categorize and catalogue things you can't control and then ranking them, right. And that was something that completely out of your control, and you're gonna beat yourself up about it, but at the same time, hard to not stress about something like that. But should you

Nick Nelson :

That was the first time that I really could, like I lost, I let it get control, I lost control of it and let it take over because I'd worked so hard to get where I was to build this knit, you know, have these marketing partners and have all these opportunities. And we have this, this new thing come in, it's and it has all this potential. And I've worked so hard to build my name in the industry. The last thing I ever wanted was to look like the guy who can't who didn't deliver and made promises he couldn't keep and that's like I mean, if nothing else, like you have your word, you know, that's like your, that's all you got, you lose everything else you have that and I felt like, it wasn't, it was nobody's fault. But at the end of the day, I'm the one responsible, regardless of what happened, you know, because I had a commitment made to me. And in that respect, I made a commitment to other people. So now, I'm not gonna throw them under the bus. It's not anybody's fault, but it was just something and I didn't have the money to just I can't go to Kroger and drop 80 or 100 grand, like, it's just not there. You know, that was one of those things. That was a really, really hard lesson like I got, I made myself physically sick, stressing to the like, to the max about how to fix this problem, where there really was nothing I could do about it.

Wyatt Pemberton :

And sometimes, you know, just going out and talking to each of those guys that you had this, you know, deals with or plan deals with them. You're like, dude, here's what happened. Dude, we're human things and we've all you know, here's the thing, you would have never failed if you would have never tried, right?

Nick Nelson :

It felt like a huge backfire to failure because you're you're ready Go it's not for lack of effort or lack of mean the truck was done, the truck was complete. It was sitting there for months just waiting. And nothing ever showed up. So, I did I went, I mean, I went to everybody, I didn't really tell them the whole story. I just told him that I was, you know, I kind of gave them a quick

Wyatt Pemberton :

the PC version

Nick Nelson :

cliffsnotes of it because, like I said, I didn't want to be I also on top of that, I want to be the guy going in there and blaming it on other people either, like I was trying to figure out how to salvage this, dia this whole thing and not and not let anybody down. But I was and it was just it was just a, it was a really hard thing to deal with, like, you know, finding a sweet spot. Where do you Where do you do

Wyatt Pemberton :

that? Well, I think you did the right thing, right? You walk away from it with two things, right? One that you've had to, you know, basically talk talk to everyone that was involved and, and walk everything back. there's a there's a lot of value in that even you know, and then there's the recognition of failure and then what you do with failure and I think when you look at failure, it happens. And then you figured out a way to move forward, you still I just saw your race that truck a few months ago. So I don't know how much I feel you want to say it was two years ago. But you've taken it and you've continued to push it forward and forward and forward and move the ball. And that's the key. I mean, it's the ones that, you know, they hit that that brick wall, that there's a failure, and then that's it, they turn around like it's a dead end, and they move backwards. You actually, you know, well, it's, yeah, hit the wall. But look, I can go left and I can go right. And maybe at some point, I get a chance to go around the wall. And you've, you've done that,

Nick Nelson :

you know, the trophic shock was the first time you know, when we when we built the first iOS car, you know, I brought everything I thought that I could, you know, that I had that I could culminate and you know, to bring Randy to bring the Jimmy's and help, because I knew Lauren, you know, we knew Lauren was going to be building a twin to my car. So we kind of helped try to do everything we could to build this team, then the trophy truck, I could do whatever I wanted to because nobody else was dependent on it. So we tried different things in geometry that was very similar to that. But they were improvements and we there were things that I could try that was not gonna not gonna affect anybody else. And we crushed it, the truck really works good. So then the more we learn, we The more we learn, the more he learned, he took everything from that trophy truck. And that's what went into Khaleesi. So, and the new generation that Jimmy's four by four has in their front end, you know, is very similar geometry to the trophy truck and even improved upon now. Everything that we that I knew we could do better we gave to that. So everybody that has that new, that newest generation of front end has all that geometry and stuff that we've, you know, swung and learned over the years. And at the end, Randy gets to give that to his customers, you know, and give them a good car.

Wyatt Pemberton :

So that's a good give back. Right from you, you know, being the testbed push them. I mean, there's no one else out there pushing as hard on those cars in singular instances than you. I mean, Lauren is out there banging the hell out of his car and Derek West beating the hell out of his car. I mean, there's a lot of Jimmy's cars getting the crap beat out of them. But from Single stance single instances nobody's doing them bigger.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, we've gotten some super cool opportunities to really like put that thing to work you know, I think I always wanted to go back and race the desert race like we talked about in the ultra for car and getting to do that battle a prim this year this year was probably one of the most fun days I've ever had in a racecar You know, there's a handful of those days that stick out in your mind and that'll appreciate you know, setting we set the overall pole and trophy tracking class one and I think at least two seconds two and a half seconds three something right right in there. You know, it wasn't it's not a best desert race. It was a sore race, but there's still a lot of fast guys there. And James Dean, you know, there's not many guys in the desert faster than James Dean, male BDC car here in Vegas, bright green. Yo, yo. And I mean, you see him go he was the only guy that passed Bryce. I think it Vegas Reno and Bryce won it and he lost it. You know, he passed Bryce in the last two trans and then Bryce won. And so for me to be able to James, I know his grandfather really well. His dad him. They're like a they're a great family. his grandfather's, the one that gave BJ ball When and you know all these other guys, they're they're starting racing. He's kind of the grandfather of off road Butch Dean. And so but after the race for Bush to say it was one of the best races he's ever watched, I think it was like one of the like, the biggest compliments I've ever gotten him watching me and his grandson battle and say it was the bit one of the best things he's ever seen.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Yeah, I think I got familiar with a Bush's whole program. Back in the day when a guy like TJ Flores was working for him doing prep work for him and racing out of his shop. Yeah, TJ won his championships out of underneath Bush, and was this was this guy, you know, for everything. And then TJ did a little bit of he got into 4400 for a little bit trophy truck for a little bit and then just completely fell out in the scene. I think. I don't think he's involved in any any race stuff today.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, I haven't seen him in a long time. As a bad guy. It's oxy but he was a good dude. He just kind of whatever happened. You know, it's it's just life I guess. Right? It's happen.

Intro/Outro :

Stay tuned. Your talent tank is in full yet.

Wyatt Pemberton :

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Intro/Outro :

Now back to the show.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well so let's talk about let's shift gears a little bit before I have some other questions for you but shifting gears and we'll shift over social media leveraging marketing yourself. We talked you know, when we opened up the session you talked about some really big air stuff that I've seen you do you know, like late like Lake Elsinore on the protein for track just sending it nationals I think there's some stuff at Nationals just full out flat getting it you brought up prim. I think he did rage at the river recently. Maybe that was last year and you're tracking like the road crossing, you know, clearing clearing the pavement. That's always pretty cool when you see somebody clear pavement, not a lot of guys stay wooded like that. That was all

Nick Nelson :

she had. We gave like the end car, I think it was like a mile and a half without lifting the foot to get to like whatever the speed we can get, you know,

Wyatt Pemberton :

I think the jump down off Prem that you're coming off The jump looking like a rocket ship and you know carrying. Oh, probably everything up to 200 to 20, maybe even 240.

Nick Nelson :

That's, yeah, we left I think at 127 on that one was 127 miles an hour we took off.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Yeah. And he carrying almost a football field in the air. You know, it's like 20 foot at the beginning and then it just tapers off in a wedge, but obviously you have a propensity to go big air. What are the steps that you go through you Nick Nelson and your What are you looking at? When you say, you know what, I see an opportunity there for me to do XYZ with my car. And I can do it. You know, you're not gonna say you're a stunt man, but you're kind of a stunt man on this. You're not clearly not doing math. I don't think I think it's all you know, in your head. What are the steps in the process as you go through to kind of qualify? Am I going to hit this jump? Is this something not? Do you walk it off and then you kind of decide game on or game off? Or how do you handle that because there's not a lot of people Doing what you do in an ultra for car today.

Nick Nelson :

It's funny, I think the only one that I ever walked, that I really even gave any thought to was potato salad Hill, which is probably the smallest and easiest out of all of them. But there's just it's a blind take off, and there's a lot of boulders down there and you have a short parking lot. So my main thing was, there's a lot of people there too, because there was trucks at the bottom of the hill. So if you rolled it or something, you're gonna hit people's vehicles. I mean, it was that was kind of one of those Lauren and I were standing there laughing about it, and he was there and he'd done it. You know, Lauren's actually jumped that one too. So that was about the only one that I think I actually gave any any thought to was just trying to be safe about it and not take somebody out or end up in a creek bed or something stupid, but and that one was the simplest and easiest probably, and then any of the other jumps. I really like the Elsinore or the prim. I know how the truck I know, I know. We tune the truck. I know it flies good. And if you watched in the video at pismo, it's just like the trucks work just like a dirt bike. When you get into the Big air like that. So you can actually move the truck with brakes or gas or just letting off the gas or anything. So if you watch the pismo job about halfway through the air, you'll hear the throttle and watch the front end come up a little bit, about five or 10 degrees, just to re situate the car for the second half, and then try to bring the tire speed back up so you won't shock the drive train and stuff like that. That one was I crept up on that one a little bit and prim. Because you if you go too far, you're in trouble. You can go short, and you're not in trouble. So I think I and nobody was there hitting it. And nobody gave me a speed. Even though the other guys were there. There's really nobody there hitting it at the time. And none of the guys had a number for me. So I had to take a shot in the dark, really and just guess. So I hit it and I was not far off. I was a little bit short. And then I just walked it out. I just added a couple of miles an hour, like two or three miles an hour to about two more times. And that put me right where I need to be. And then we just kept hitting it over and over and over. And then yeah, it was just it was Huge though and I didn't realize the guy in front of me he landed in he cleared it and broke his back and he pulled up I thought he broke the truck I didn't even realize it so I went around and did it and I landed in the flats too and that was the hardest hit I've ever taken in the car and and 1012 years or whatever you've been doing this like by far was if I didn't have my arm three on i get i would have been hurt probably do but haven't hardshell seats good shocks proper shock tuning like you know I run we have mastercraft good belts we have bad my our three my carbon fiber helmet which i've you know lightweight on my neck and still like those two strings that come up the back of your neck were I mean it was like a couple weeks of just like pretty rough after that one

Wyatt Pemberton :

I had no doubt that you were taking all the precautions to go do something like that but at the same time you know there's always the man I I don't mind hitting big stuff but at the same time I don't like being the first one to do it.

Nick Nelson :

Like I thought you know these guys have been out there bunch this these guys they know I've seen the video At home so I'm thinking like cool, you know, like someone's gonna give me at least some kind of pace to start with, you know, since I've never seen it and everybody's just staring at me when we get there. So I'm like well I guess I'll just hit it so I just got my I just jumped back in my car I went around and went for it and I think I had like 56 miles an hour or something just to see and that's kind of the difference though. You kind of have to you got to be a little if you're doing stuff like that you have to kind of use it a lot. I mean, we've all seen the videos these dudes just going full retard and getting seriously hurt like in the dunes, you know, and doing these mega huge jumps just a flat and it's it's not gonna go ever go. Well, you gotta be smart about it.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, yeah, I think the first one I saw that I was really just absolutely floored with there. I think it was a pismo two, couple years ago was Frank Taylor in that like white Missoula, like prerunner truck and he just, you know, I think it him there's guy named turbo Mike out of Texas. They were out there and just, you know, just sailing you know, just sailing these big ass trucks. So we knew it could be done, but when yours came out. I know, it sounds like I'm blowing your head up too much, but I'm still enamored with how far it almost does. Like I said, people I worked with watch the video were like, that's fake. Like, no, it's not fake.

Nick Nelson :

I guess we just it just doesn't feel like what watching the video. I was like, Man, that's rad. But when you're in the car, I just, it's fun, you know, you it just doesn't feel much different than a lot of other things we do. I think Elsinore was the first one that gave me that taste of the big hug that I was at and I just never knew like I always wanted to do it all the time after that.

Wyatt Pemberton :

So this is you really helped you contribute and give back to your sponsors give them back extra marketing material, you know, they're able to see you know, every time a viral hit of yours comes out. They they of course you get their namesake is out there, you're giving back in that regard. Have you been able to you know, monetize that any further. Have you been able to push the nilsa motor sports name further? Has there been any ideas for What your next thing is going to be you're gonna go out and do some some some other crazy stuff what's next in that regard?

Nick Nelson :

You know it's funny like I we really did nose to the grindstone race stuff like hardcore like we're gonna make every race we're gonna race the series we're gonna do this we're gonna do this and like one day you'll make it one day you'll make it and this past year we more or less just kind of went out and had fun like really and I had no idea what was gonna happen at pismo I got there to hang out with these guys and we just went out and literally just spent the day having a good time and that's what came of it and it went you know bigger than anything You know, I've set pulls the hammers in one minute one minute or done this or that and then it's really like everybody's like, congratulations cool like the people that know you. But no, no kid in the Midwest is gonna share that, you know, he doesn't it's not selling shocks radius, but when they when they see you Hockett, you know, the mega Hockett, pismo bats, something that they're gonna look at and be like, Dude, what kind of shocks are on that thing? Or what kind of wheels or what kind of this You know, or or just share it to their friends because even if you're not a car, dude, when you see something that big, you're like, Man, that's badass.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well, that's exactly where I was going like you started, you know, the recognition of other ways to give back value to to your partners. I think you're onto something I don't know exactly what it is or how you can monetize or work it out or what that next viral hit is. Like I said, we'll Gentile talking about like, milk run, he goes, man, you know, if, if I knew that running Lauren's car through a garage door was gonna get me 10 million hits, we would have done it much earlier.

Nick Nelson :

That's kind of the funny thing, though, is is and you kind of hit on it is, you know, you you go to a race or something, you have this big master plan for how this is gonna, like work out, you know, you're gonna get this footage and whatever. But it's the days you go out and you got some homies with you and you're messing around and you jump to salad hill or you have to Dune or you know, whatever I think and that ends up being the big thing, but it's organic. I guess maybe it's not because it's not Like you said, half of them are, I don't even have a film crew there. It's cell phone video somebody gave you that you might not even know. Yeah, and this is it's just cool, but you know it works out that way.

Wyatt Pemberton :

If we could figure out what that formula is and replicate the formula we'd all be rich.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, I think watching the watching the Jim Connor files. I haven't watched all of it, but I watched the first couple episodes and that was Ken Block's thing was never intended to do it twice. Like he was going to build it. He was gonna do a cool video and never do it again. And when he when they were like, cool, man, what's next? He's like, Oh, shit, like I don't know what that was it I saw a guy like what do you want me to do?

Wyatt Pemberton :

Another 10 plus in you know, building cars.

Nick Nelson :

Finally, like I'm done with this. I it's i think but I think Asana is gonna do it now or something. It seems like he's gonna take over it because he's just like, Alright, I think I think I'm out like I've got enough.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Again, this is now we're gonna downshift to another gear here in the good segue to some of the work that you've done, but you have a very interesting and tight relationship with Jeremy went over your work. Yeah. And it seemed like you were one of the first guys really pushing the HP tins and doing test work for Jeremy in the high pinion tins. You've done some stuff with his turbo hydro 400 program. He's code driven forea How cool is that to be involved in prototypical being prototypical stuff.

Nick Nelson :

It's kind of funny how that happened. It was totally random. I I was out at hammers. When I moved out here. I started Rockwell buggy. I didn't have a race car. I did like an old East Coast like Harlan, Kentucky type big 47 LTV Rockwell buggy, and I was at hammers just out wheeling for fun. And Jeremy was out there. And he'd written out with his dad didn't have anything out there to stay and we were staying for the weekend. And I met him through a friend and I was like, I got another seat for the weekend. So and we live in Vegas, so you know, you can roll back. So we ended up hanging out the weekend. That's how I met him and brought him back to Vegas. And he took me and showed me gear works and he showed me like the 36 flying trophy truck axles there. You know, we're we're used to Like, we didn't have 40 spline stuff back then, you know, at some chrome like 35 pounds was dope. And I'm like, Man, this shit is crazy. You know, I don't even know like who runs this stuff and it just blew my mind what looking at all the cool stuff they had in their trophy trucks and stuff. Like I think it was like not even two years later after bin and all those axle housings when I was going to build if S car I called him and I was like, man, remember all that stuff? He showed me I need it. And he said go Yeah, I remember last from big speed. He's a good buddy of mine. You know, he gave me a last run back in the day when he saw race. And he's like, what are you doing? Like that's that's so expensive. He thought I was just this retarded, you know, because I was going to run this super expensive trophy truck stuff. And it was like the best choice I ever made because I went from tearing up everything every race to this one time upfront cost of running just full trophy truck hubs and axles and gears to like I can run us I ran three seasons on hubs, you know and never been to spindle again never had. So it paid off quite well in the long run. And that's how that relationship really started. That was just the ball decision. rolling down the hill

Wyatt Pemberton :

Jeremy's almost become you know the bellwether by which you guys are running your third members like if you're not running your work third you're just asking for trouble.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah I mean I'm and I hate I don't want to say this out loud but I've never had it I've never lost a trance from yours ever. I've never lost a converter a trans anything I mean, we've torn up diffs but really the only diff we have problems with there obviously the the big block was just too much for the reverse rotation gear. You know, that's what we kept having problems with and Khaleesi we could go lead a race, but it just made so much torque it with that gear being backwards not supported. It's just it's just, you know, a time bomb.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I've heard some guys working on maybe some reversers to put on the transfer case to reverse that.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, and and you know, in that car, that would have been if the car had been laid out differently. I could have done that. But just to redo it. I think that's what Lauren did on his and they had to move the links which changed the geometry which changed everything and that car. I spent mean probably hundreds of hours with Jason at Jimmy's making sure that that the squat and the pinion cycle and everything was perfect to match that front end because everything we didn't we built that we built the suspension in space and the fuel tank and the drivetrain and everything else just followed like it was no compromises to suspension. So really, it just wasn't even really possible to put it back together right and move everything where it needed to be to go to open.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Alright, man, outside of that I have two future questions for you. The first one we'll take it one at a time. The diamond t man, you were building a North Mr Northrup style little diamond t trophy rat something like this over at what happened to that on hold.

Nick Nelson :

Thought Yeah, this with this when we ended up not sell it. We ended up having both trucks still in the shop. And so I just couldn't throw any money at it. Gotcha. And it's it's in my shop right now. And it's not it's not gonna be a rat. She's gonna be something different that nobody's done yet. So it'll be cool. It'll come around sometime front ends built for it right now, like I built that whole new two wheel drive suspension kit. So it's sitting in the shop built ready to go in the cab sitting there and trailing arms are sitting there, but we may put that front end and another project we're weighing the options when you're asking what's next there. I've got I'm debating on a couple things. So it's just sitting there ready to go. And until I decide what that what to do,

Wyatt Pemberton :

I mean, that's good. I mean, it's okay not to have answers. Just like when we're talking about going to college, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? I it's okay not to know.

Nick Nelson :

Well, I really, really, really, really want to do that project, and it will get done someday. I yeah, just I'm all about that thing. But in the meantime, with what we have laying around the shop, we may make something we can just go out and go big with and may just have make a hucker just to go out and have fun and send big.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Alright, I like it. All right, here's my last one. This is this the one I've been looking forward to for quite some time here. Perfect mini jet boats. Major case so we're talking like 10 foot to 12 foot aluminum boats. Yeah with your HMWU hw skids underneath the boat. So you can take this thing and what you tend to do is you you get the aluminum boat, you go find yourself a salvaged high horsepower jetski take all the crap out of the jetski everything but the throw the whole away Take the cool stuff bolted into this aluminum low profile mini jet boat with you hw skids on the bottom and then you go river ripping, good for sandbars and rock bars or ice or whatever. They fit in really tight spaces. So it's kind of like a jet ski, but it's way more robust.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, it's funny that it was kind of that thing I'd been I had my eye on it quite a while and just really want to do one but you know, we're so busy and everything else kind of way, way more priority and I kept sending them the day of messing with them. department like I'd send them to him all the time. And Dave had just enough time idle or he, he's like, man, we got it. We're gonna do we got to do it, we got to do it and I'm like, Alright, if you do it, like I'll do, I'll do one to Dave actually the one that like pushed it to finally happen so they're, they're just super rad man, we love them. They we had him and I both women and we, you know, we're doing 50 miles an hour and two inches of water. And you can just see the bottom there's nothing there and you're just gliding across it. And then you can jump to bars and whatever you want to do is things get away with murder. It's kind of like the ultra for car it's like a side by side or ultra for car water.

Wyatt Pemberton :

That's what that's what they look like and you can take him anywhere. Like I saw some guys uh, you know, they've got little winches on the front for a winching over stuff, you know, tree falls when you're in you know, really tight, you know, back back country backwoods water or the stuff where the guys are like running Alaska, Montana, Idaho, like the Big Rapids stuff. David Hartman really got me kind of hooked you know, and I'd already seen them run across my Instagram and then he got one What else would you guys do you guys bought four of them

Nick Nelson :

yeah we got four of them Cody laser not has one and then the other guy up in junction has the fourth one and then we have another round coming and so we did four cedars on this one so you can kind of have a cruiser and take everybody with you and then I just picked up another 300 horsepower ski for my two seat I'm gonna do a two seat and it's just the the race the nasty race beat down on that we can just do try this really stupid stuff and because it'll be a quite a bit lighter and

Wyatt Pemberton :

is it 10 footer or is it a 12?

Nick Nelson :

No 12 but it's about 300 pounds lighter and it's got a quarter inch aluminum with eh MW on the other ones. This one's gonna be 300 pounds lighter but have a 338 center plate. And so you can really just but we're able to light it up in other places and then throw in an extra 50 or set it to on top of that. So this so it gets nasty.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Gotcha. No Where are you guys getting wrecked skis

Nick Nelson :

on I end up finding a ski in Vegas for the 301 that was just sitting that people had bought it was in perfect shape actually and I the hardest thing the hardest part of the whole deal is finding them that's that's it's there's no answer I got no good answer for you wherever you can find one they've stolen the absolutely home Rhonda on his first one and found like the you know, the one in a million that was just they fell off a trailer with four hours on it and the people hadn't gotten insurance yet so they'd never went to an insurance and never went to auction. And he just went over bought it out of these garage all trashed and stole it. Jesus.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Haha. Well that that has been one of the one of my hiccups of why I haven't pulled the trigger on one and he and I've talked about it like plenty and then there's the other side of a I need to convince a couple friends to also get them down here. We have a ton of waterways down here in Houston. We will in Texas, a journal public, you know, the waters, the state land, it's public so you don't have to have special permits to run on you run it You get your little boat license your little boat tag on it, and you can go anywhere now you can't get off on people's land as you're going through it. But yeah, you did.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Like, you know, we were on the Colorado and we've taken it to a zoo. And we ran by toe Park and have a so we went and ran the cattails. And this is like a little single line, like it's kind of like a little Racecourse through the cattails. And then we shot through a bridge and there's about four inches on both sides of the boat. And you can pretty much do whatever you want. There's nobody there to mess with here tell you what to do. And at least for now, we'll see how long that lasts, but they're good time and you definitely want to it's we need to have, you gotta have a couple with you that way if you get into something you can get get each other out,

Wyatt Pemberton :

but just heavy enough. Yeah, that's what I've seen. I think the ones with the winches on the front,

Nick Nelson :

we can pull we pull Dave put it on the beach once and we just picked it out him and I just pulled it pull it off by ourselves. It's all right there pretty. You can move them they're not bad.

Wyatt Pemberton :

And then with the the value of the US dollar versus the Canadian dollar today, they make it they're pretty reasonable to buy from the Canadians who are building these things.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah they are well we did the jet stream one this time and then I think I'm going to do a different one I'm doing it we're working with another guy in Alaska on the next one's the lighter one. And so I think these are going to be another step above even so looking forward to getting my hands on that one. We're waiting on them right now.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well I'm excited I'm excited been watching like I said, I've been watching y'all do it and I've been hesitant you know, you know I'm not ready to dip the pinky toe in the water yet but I've been I have been shopping trying to find salvage excuse me and they're just few and far between especially I'm down on the gulf coast where you can basically boat year round here and I still haven't found there's got to be a source there's got to be some things get wrecked.

Nick Nelson :

Yeah, I mean, we've got Yeah, we were digging hard but it's it's not they don't come easy. That's for sure. Man. The we're filled we're going to do a video with you know, Casey and some other sponsors are going to jump on and we're going to do a good video on pricing Blake Wilkie boat. I have yet another guy so Wilkie myself and Dave and I are gonna go and film some stuff here. Come up so hopefully you guys will get to see something cool from that here pretty soon

Wyatt Pemberton :

and see there you go there's I was asking what's next for the viral stuff and it's not necessarily gonna have you know, rubber and wheels and tires and horsepower in that regard it's gonna be on the water

Nick Nelson :

well we still got a trophy truck sitting there and I got I got some parts in there so you might see it fly again someday soon.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Soon, someday soon. Well Nick, thank you again for coming on man. Did we check all the boxes?

Nick Nelson :

I think we got a more than all of them but it was fun. It was fun. Kind of digging into some of the stuff we hadn't talked about a long time and appreciate the opportunity

Wyatt Pemberton :

pass it was a fun fun trip down memory lane plus as well. just learned so many things about you like that. I've known you known you for years raised with you even pitted with you and Parker one year. When you're running your run Joe dilute she's a trophy truck at that point. And then and yeah, just all the hammer stuff. But it was cool to that. I just didn't know stuff about Shannon and you really. I was fully entertained. I hope everyone that listens. This is entertained as well, man. You're fun guy, man.

Nick Nelson :

upload it and run down. too far down the rabbit hole on some of that, but Yeah, dude, it's a man it's been it's been a roller coaster but you know that's, that's what you just got take what what comes your way, right?

Wyatt Pemberton :

Yeah, but you gotta be doing something right I'm talking to you, right? That's a low standard.

Unknown Speaker :

I made it.

Wyatt Pemberton :

Well hey, you guys should follow it follow this guy follow this guy's at least on Instagram at minimum it's a V in Nelson or Vin Nelson or the Nick mill

Nick Nelson :

so yeah most people most people miss that second in there. Yes it's the it's not snuck in

Wyatt Pemberton :

Nelson on Instagram, man, this guy's always got viral stuff on there. Give him a follow your liking if you're in ultra four into four obviously if you're listening to this, you know who Nick is. And if you don't Well, now you do have to pass two hours, man. appreciate y'all tuning in. Nick. Thank you. I appreciate can't wait to see the next things you put out. Okay,

Nick Nelson :

thanks, brother. Come, come party on the boats with us soon.

Wyatt Pemberton :

I got build one. All right, we're out. I hope you guys really liked this episode it was a really fun one to make as usual, I really have to thank my my three partners on this custom splice those guys if you do anything for offroad recovery or even on road recovery or any projects please hit Todd and his crew up at a custom splice comm give them a call machining whoa my gosh branding machines Stan and Brandon those guys over there in Fort Wayne Indiana. They do it all if they can't make it I don't know who can if if you need it made they will do it hit those guys up. They are a big supporter of the talent tank and I value their involvement. And then last but not least, magnitude performance Jason yoed and company their neck, atrocious, Texas and everything that they've done for for the talent tanking getting behind and supporting this, this venture in this project and everything. Give them give them a call for your suspension needs. These guys do magic with springs and then the parent company mass motor sports engines and they have they have engines on lock handbill, lots of horsepower. There you guys Thanks guys. We'll catch you next week.

Intro/Outro :

Thank you for listening and taking a dive into detail intake. Please like and subscribe on Instagram at detail intake or our website, the talent tank calm